[MMX] The Last Standing
by Black Mantle
Summary: Zero has disappeared, leaving X with a strange message that will change one life forever. (Complete)
1. Preface

**The Last Standing**

_**Preface**_

April 27, 2002

Welcome one and all, especially fans of the blue bomber, Megaman! I have been a big fan of the Megaman series since MM2 on the NES and have played almost all of the video game incarnations of this fighting robot, including Megaman Legends and Megaman Battle Network. (Yes, I even remember the cartoon show that ran for about 2 seasons.)

Megaman X was the first series that presented a more developed Megaman. The original Megaman was a rather simple character, programmed with a sense of justice, he sought to defeat evil wherever it reared it's ugly head, which was always in the form of the mad scientist, Dr. Wily. But X was far more than that, with real emotions and a free will, X found himself lost in a strange world. He was now acting on his own accord, instead of just following the path that he was programmed with, and his adventures would leave him questioning not only his actions, but himself as well.

With out giving too much of it away, this will become the basis of the story. (Sort of.)

I have also created a few new characters for this story, these were characters that I had envisioned for another MMX fanfiction I was going to write, but I never got the inspiration needed to go through with it, bummer.

Anyway, just to give credit where credit is due, the inspiration for this story was another fanfiction called "Wily's Canyon" by Noble Knight, it's here on FanFiction.net if you look for it. I hope I didn't just give something away, but if you haven't read it yet, I suggest you do, but not before reading mine. (Nudge, nudge.)

I'm posting the first part of it today in honor of my first year on FanFiction.net, and I hope to post the rest of it over the next week, but I'm still in the middle of writing it. I hope you all enjoy it, and please leave some feedback/reviews.

**Black Mantle**

April 28, 2002

Well, here is the second part of "The Last Standing". And I would like to thank the two people who have already left me reviews and "congradulations" for my being on FanFiction.net for a year. Yeah, I know spelling certain words can be a pain. Just the other day I was at my University writing an exam and I dropped into the library (_before_ the exam, not _during_) to check a dictionary for the correct spelling of "baccalaureate", then I said "screw it" I'll just write "B.Sc." since I didn't want to sound like a smart-ass, and… Aw Hell, I just realized I AM a smart-ass. :D

Whoops! I also forgot to add that critical copyright info on the stories, we wouldn't want Capcom to get hard on my ass, now would we.

So anyway, fixed a few speeling misteaks that I missed, copyright info and a new chapter have been added, not a bad update for 1 day, eh?

**Black Mantle**

April 29, 2002

Now presenting chapter 3, in new diet brand with fewer calories and no MSG ;-). That makes 3 chapters in 3 days, expect it to continue at a chapter a day until I get it finished. I figure it will last 8-10 chapters, so it should be complete within a week. If things seem a little calmer in these chapters, expect it to get a bit more "deep" very shortly.

**Black Mantle**

April 30, 2002

My final exams are over with, too bad I can't enjoy the summer since I've signed up for a summer class that starts in two days! If you're wondering how I found my finals, you can get a basic idea when you read the next few chapters. But since this chapter was written yesterday evening while I was in a better mood, it'll be fairly light-hearted, and maybe a bit funny depending on your sense of humor.

**Black Mantle**

May 1, 2002

My only day off! I'm hoping that I will finish this story today, but that might be a long shot as I have other things to do as well. If I do get it finished, I'll probably post the whole thing tomorrow, otherwise it'll just be part 6. But for today, it's chapter 5. Enjoy.

**Black Mantle**

May 2, 2002

O.K. So I didn't get to finish the whole story, but I did make some really good progress-I finished the ending, too bad you won't see it for a few more days. I would also like to thank those who have submitted more reviews to my story; it's a real boost to hear that people like my writing. So without further adieu, I present chapter 6, I hope it leaves you screaming like a little girl. (Heh, heh.)

**Black Mantle**

May 3, 2002

Don't bring it up! I'm guilty, it's true, this is the lame chapter, it's the "Star Trek 3" of this story, but I needed something to fill the gap between 6 and 8. Don't worry, I'll make it up to you when I put up the last 3 chapters over the weekend, and they're much better.

That's enough guilt for one day. This chapter isn't gut wrenching like last, but I think we needed a break after that 5-6 double-whammy. This chapter was really there to show that even in the worst of times, there is still that "silver lining in every dark cloud". (Yeah, they'll buy that.)

**Black Mantle**

May 4, 2002

Here's Chapter 8, and tomorrow I should have this finished. There are actually two chapters left after this one, but I haven't decided if I'm going to be nice and post both at once, or be really sadistic and hold one until Monday. Cross your fingers!

**Black Mantle**

May 5, 2002

Well, I've decided to end it here and now. The last two chapters are up, and this story is finished. And I hope you all enjoyed reading it, as much as I enjoyed writing it. (Yes, that's a pretty sappy line, but hey, don't we all need a bit of sap in our lives. Speaking of which, I could really go for some pancakes right now.)

**Black Mantle**

June 24, 2002

For those of you wondering where Zero is, he's not here. This story takes place just after Megaman X 6 and heads towards the Megaman Zero storyline, which takes place another century in the future. If you haven't played either of those games, then I think you get the gist of what happens in the first chapter of the story. I've heard that Zero is supposed to be in Megaman X 7, but I don't care, the story is written and done, so bully to Capcom for ignoring MMX6's Zero ending. All in all, this is NOT a Zero story.

It would appear that FanFiction.net suffered a bit of a server failure. Fortunately, nothing was damaged or lost, but the server wasn't accepting any new stories, updates or searches. I figured now was as good a time as any to touch up this story with a few more errors fixed and a formatting change, namely the paragraph indentations--which are apparently not visible to Netscape, oh well. So now that Fanfiction.net is back online, here's the updated version of _The Last Standing_.

**Black Mantle**


	2. The Last Stand

**The Last Standing**

**A Megaman X fanfiction by Black Mantle**

This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Capcom and are used without permission. Cleo, Dash, Katie, Spinstar are © Black Mantle.

_**The Last Stand**_

X rolled the module in his hands, inspecting it, wondering why Zero sent it to him. He took his eyes off the device for a second to look out the window, even though there wasn't much to look at. Most of the ground was devastated; charred black or covered in scrap metal. Occasionally, a small patch of fresh land, maybe a few square meters in area was visible, and sometimes, a grazing of grass or a few budding flowers were visible. X thought to himself, he had heard before that life was all about facing trials and pain, and that life would find a way through any disaster. Sure enough, life was resilient, life is about resisting death itself.

* * *

Dr. Cain, Alia, Douglas, Lifesavor and Signas looked on as X placed the module on the ground. He stepped back towards the others as a holographic image appeared before them, taking the shape of their missing comrade in arms.

"X, I hope it is you watching this, and I'm sure you have a lot of questions. I can't answer them all, because there are things that even I do not understand yet. But, this is what I can tell you."

"I have a dark secret, of which you know something about; I was the cause of the Mavericks and the original source of the Nightmare virus. That is why I am no longer with you. I have left in order to seek an answer, and to purge myself of this accursed program. I don't know if I'll ever return, I may have to terminate myself in order to ensure the Nightmare affects no one else, but I am leaving this world in good hands."

"X, I know Sigma is still out there, I don't know what he can do in this destroyed world, but if the people of Earth are trying to rebuild, then you can be sure he is too. It is your duty to stop him once and for all. But first, I have a request…"

"This module contains two other messages, I suppose you could play them now, but it would make more sense if you took the module to the coordinates programmed into it. You'll have to search a bit, but once you've found what you are looking for, play the next message."

"You were a good friend, X. I don't know if we'll ever meet again, and depending on the circumstances, it may be better we don't. But whatever happens, keep your chin up, I'll be alright."

The ghostly image disappeared, leaving X confused.

* * *

"We're almost at the coordinates, sir."

X snapped out of his dream. "What, oh. Thanks, Dash."

X turned away from the green bot driving the air car.

* * *

"X! I don't want you going alone. Someone should go with you."

"I'll be fine, I can handle things myself."

"Still, but there are still Mavericks out there, and if you get caught by a couple of them, you may not be returning."

"Look, I took down Sigma several times. If I can go toe-to-toe with him, I can take on a few Mavericks."

"No buts, I'm sending a few units with you."

Alia stepped forward. "I'll go, I want to know what Zero was taking about."

Signas held up his hand. "Sorry, I need you here. You too Douglas. Why don't you take a few of the recruits? It'll give them some experience in case you run into any problems."

X was rather irate. "Recruits? If you're so concerned about me, why are you fixing me up with a bunch of kids whose operating systems were compiled less than a week ago? I'll probably have to spend most of my time keeping them out of trouble."

"That's an order. Everyone here has taken the full training and is more than capable of watching out for themselves. Besides, you've been rather distant lately, and I think it's a good time for you to get to know some of the people you'll be working with in the future."

* * *

There was only one X ever got along with well enough to work with side by side, and he's gone. Sure, he liked Alia, but she was support, now he had three newcomers with him. It would have been bad enough had this been a routine mission, but this was about a message Zero had left him, this was far too personal to just have someone tag along.

X looked around at his three companions. To his left was Dash, short for "Bomb Dasher" which is pretty self explanatory. Able to run fast despite his thick armor, he gets to his target quickly, drops his payload, and gets out before it detonates. He'd look pretty normal were it not for the two long "wings" extending from his back. They really aren't wings, more like long crane arms that extend out, each ended by a long sharp scythe type weapon. Even weirder was how they looked when folded up while he was sitting down.

Dash was an over eager character, wanting to jump in and prove himself the moment he was first activated. Working with the Maverick Hunters was a thrill for him, and being teamed up with the most famous Hunter of all time had his circuits humming in excitement. X really didn't know how to react to this rabid fan of his, whether he should play along or try to set him straight, either way, Dash was getting on his nerves.

Sitting behind Dash was the only familiar face to X, Armored Armadillo. He was one of the first reploids to go Maverick, and was one of the first that X had to dispatch. He had since been rebuilt and purged of the virus, and was now one of the Hunters. That's not to say it made X feel any easier about him, but at least X recognized him.

Armored Armadillo, or "Arm" as everyone called him was a shy sort and always a little bit nervous. Having been a Maverick, now a Hunter only served to unsettle him a little more. But over time, he was getting used to his new environment, but still having a little trouble getting used to his new "friends".

Behind X was the last of his companions, Cleo. She was previously a tour guide at the local history museum, before it was attacked in a Maverick outbreak. She dressed like an ancient Egyptian Queen, possibly to mimic her namesake, the famous Kleopatra. The gold staff with blue spiraling stripes painted on it only helped to promote the image.

Being much older than Dash, she behaved very maturely and ladylike, although not the "royal pain in the ass" that Dash occasionally accused her of. X liked her more than the other two because of her maturity and sensibility. But still, she didn't belong here either.

X looked out his window again, then down to the module he was holding. "Hold it. Put her down here, Dash."

"Roger!"

Dash put the air car down and the four of them got out, in the middle of a scrap yard.

Cleo looked around. "Are you sure this is the right place?"

X checked the module again. "Yep, this is it."

Arm was poking around some of the junk. "So, what are we looking for again?"

"We'll know it when we see it."

* * *

The quartet spent almost an hour sifting through rubbage within a 100 meter radius of the car.

"Dammit Zero, what did you put out here? Did you want me to find it or not?"

Cleo called back to the senior Hunter. "Why don't you replay the message, or possibly the rest of it?"

X didn't want to, Zero said to play it once he found it, whatever "it" was.

"Aaaaah!" *CRASH*

"What happened over there?"

Arm called back to X's query. "Sorry! A washing machine almost fell on me."

X and Cleo turned back to their respective searches as Arm gave the deviant appliance a swift kick.

Digging into his own mess, Dash was busily rearranging a horde of mangled car parts when he saw a solid object underneath. Moving more junk out of the way, he hit paydirt. "Hey guys! I found something!"

Everyone came to see what he found. "What is it?"

Dash stepped back to reveal the large gray block. "It's a door. Shall we open it?"

X shrugged. "That's what doors are for, aren't they?"

Working together, the four or them managed to pry open the large steel door. Behind it, a dark passage leading down at a rather steep angle. The four Hunters turned adventurers pulled out some flashlights and proceeded into the darkness.

The corridor was over 100 meters long and sloped more than 20 meters down. At the end was another door, this one wasn't as thick as the outer door and was much easier to open.

* * *

Inside the second door was a large room, totally dark.

"Someone see if they can find a light switch or something."

The four of them stumbled about the room, their flashlights barely able to show anything in the dusty environs.

Arm stepped on a piece of scrap lying on the floor. "What on Earth have they done to this place, it's a mess!"

Elsewhere, Cleo had found a control panel that still had some power to it. With a touch it lit up and a monitor above her flashed into existence. "Hold on, I found something."

A few seconds and a few buttons later, the lights of the large room flickered and illuminated, bathing the chamber in a soft white light. Arm came face to face with the rusted corpse he almost tripped over.

"IT'S A STIFF!!"

Everyone looked around to notice that there were more than a dozen destroyed robots in the chamber with them. Arm was screaming like a little girl.

"Arm! Shut up!"

Cleo looked to her left, a piece of a robot was lying there, the head. "Wait a minute. I know this bot."

She gracefully picked up the head, it looked like a metallic skull. "This is Skullman. We must be in Dr. Wily's laboratory."

Dash scratched his head. "Wily?"

"Dr. Albert Wily, he was the assistant of Dr. Light, the one who built me. But while Dr. Light wanted to create robots for the good of mankind, Wily wanted to take over the world. He built and reprogrammed robots to serve him, and it was the job of my predecessor to stop them. The history books didn't record what happened to him, and it wasn't it my databanks when I woke up either, it happened after I was built and sealed away."

Arm held his shivering and screaming down. "So, why did Zero send us here."

"Let's ask him." X took out the module and laid it on the ground. The hologram reappeared.

"So, now you see my dark past. Just as you were built by Dr. Light, I was built by Dr. Wily, based on plans that he had stolen. Just as you were built to benefit humanity, I was designed to destroy it. Wily created a powerful new virus, the Nightmare virus could drive any machine to madness, not just reploids, but anything with a computer core. He wanted to unleash it and me onto the world, a force which no one could stop."

"Fortunately, I was stopped. When he activated me, he was gearing up for a final showdown with Megaman. However, the virus worked too well, and it turned me into what we now call a Maverick. It took most of his robots to bring me down, more than a dozen were destroyed in the battle, and several more were severely injured. Wily was able to fix some of them before Megaman would arrive later that day, but he was running out of time. So the rest, he just left them here."

"I couldn't tell you about this before, I feared what your response would be. Now that you know about the virus, I figured I could let you know about my origins, and now you know why I am no longer by your side."

There was a pause for a few seconds before the ghostly image concluded the message from beyond.

"X, this is not yet over, there is one more thing you must see. The south door out of here is sealed, but you should be able to open it. Play the last message there."

The image disappeared again.

X took the module, and the four moved to the south wall. The door wouldn't budge, but after ten minutes of working at it, they managed to cut through. The corridor on the other side was much shorter, and at the end was the remnants of the original door. Inside, the sight sent shivers through their titanium bodies.

The entire room was a mess, scrap and destroyed robots littered the room.

Cleo was in awe. "This must be it, this is where it ended."

They walked through the rubble to the center of the room where they found a table with two robots laying on it.

"Megaman."

X walked over to the corpse of his predecessor. Severely damaged, his right arm missing and wires hanging out from every where. The other robot was in even worse shape, torn apart with large gaping holes puncturing the body. The head was still intact and revealed the robot to be female.

Dash was totally out of it. "What happened here?"

X laid down the module again.

"This is it, my final message to you, and you can see it is the final message for them."

"This is where the final battle took place between Megaman and Dr. Wily. The doctor had kidnapped Dr. Light's other robot, Roll, the female on the table. He was going to use her as bait to lure Megaman into a trap, to lure him to me. But he had to change his plans when I didn't 'cooperate'. So instead, he lured him here and attacked him with his remaining robots."

"From what I have pieced together from the computer core, Megaman was able to take down some of the robots, but was ultimately overpowered. Wily didn't destroy him outright, instead, he let him watch as he tortured and destroyed Roll."

"Robots of that day didn't know what emotions were, but I'll be damned if Megaman didn't feel true rage on that day."

"Megaman went berserk, and broke free of the other robots. They couldn't stand against him, and were defeated. One after another they fell, some destroyed totally, others were struck down, left half alive. He then turned on Wily. Wily was using one of his large machines, thick armor, massive weapons, ready for anything, even Megaman. The battle raged on, demolishing the whole room. In the end, Wily won, and Megaman was defeated, but Wily would not enjoy his victory. He was severely wounded, and managed to make his way out of his monstrosity before he collapsed and perished."

"And so, an era came to an end. Megaman was destroyed, and Wily was defeated once and for all. All of his robots were either destroyed, or left to rust away. Well, not quite. Even after his death, Wily had left something for the future, me. This is why I have left, to put an end to him once and for all."

"X, we have been good friends, and have fought diligently together. Defeat Sigma, with both of us gone, Wily will be defeated once and for all. And this will not happen again."

"Goodbye."

The image disappeared for the last time, and the module shut down.

X was left with a tear in his eye.

* * *

X was looking down upon the destroyed form of the original when Cleo walked up to him. "Over here, you have to see this."

X walked over, laying amongst the rubble, were some worn out clothes covering a skeleton.

"So, you're Wily. Not much the look at I must say." X crouched down to the skull. "This is all your fault. Of course, that was your plan, wasn't it?"

The skull didn't reply.

"No matter, you will be defeated, totally and completely."

To be continued


	3. The Last One

**The Last Standing**

**A Megaman X fanfiction by Black Mantle**

This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Capcom and are used without permission. Cleo, Dash, Katie, Spinstar are © Black Mantle.

_**The Last One**_

Behind them, Dash and Arm were sifting through the wreckage, poking through the various bits of Wily's former army, making a record of everything.

"Dash, do you believe in ghosts?"

"'Ghosts'? You mean like the ghosts of these robots?"

"Y-yeah."

"Not a chance. These robots were way to primitive, didn't even have real personalities. There's no way any of these could become ghosts."

"T-that's a r-relief."

Arm went about his business without noticing Dash extending one of his wings over to him. The sharp end tapped Arm on his shoulder.

"Boo."

"AAAAAAAHH!!!!!"

Arm turned around to hear Dash laughing. "You jerk!"

"What's going on over there?"

"Dash is being a total jerk!"

"Sorry, I couldn't help myself."

Cleo humphed and turned back to X. "Kids."

"You stop that."

"Sorry, I won't do it again."

Arm and Dash turned back to their respective chores. Grumbling about his recent scare, Arm took one step forward and felt a sudden jolt to his foot, an electric shock.

"Ouch!" Arm turned. "Dash!"

"What?" Dash was standing several meters away.

"Wait, you're over there. I felt something."

Arm looked down to see what shocked his foot. Below him, he saw a robot arm, damaged, and shooting out small sparks.

"Oh, it was just a piece of scrap."

The hand moved.

"AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­AAHHH­HHHHH­HHHHH­HHHHH­HHHHH­HHHHH­HHHHH­HHHHH­HHHHH­HHH!!­!!!!!­!!!!!­!!!!!­!!!!!­!!!!!­!!!!!­!!!!!­!!!!!­!!!!"

Arm curled into a ball and rolled back towards the center of the room. X, Cleo and Dash ran to him.

X stopped the rolling Hunter. "What happened, did Dash play some stupid prank again?"

"Hey! It wasn't me."

Arm allowed one of his arms to extended from the compact shape and pointed towards the pile. "Something m-moved. Over th-there."

Cleo stood facing the pile. "Probably a static discharge when you approached. And come out of that thing, I can't talk to a ball."

Arm uncurled. "I'm telling you it tried to grab me." The terrified Hunter looked back at the pile. From the rubble hands started to crawl out, followed by arms, bodies, heads.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! ZOMBIES!!"

The other three looked back, but saw nothing.

"Get a hold of yourself."

X walked over to the pile of scrap where Arm was previously working. "A lot of residual energy. I think Cleo's right, it was probably a static discharge in a motor control causing a sudden motion."

Cleo looked down to the armadillo bot. "Now get up, and get back to work."

"Wait a minute."

Cleo looked up. "X?"

"There's a definite energy signature here, weak, but solid."

X moved towards the pile and started to climb a bit. Examining closer, he reached his hand out to touch. From the scrap another hand jumped out and grabbed his arm.

"ZOMBIE!!!"

Arm looked for security by clamping to the nearest solid object.

Cleo grunted. "Get your face out of my chest!" She started to beat the armored head of the small Hunter.

X looked at the hand in astonishment. "He's alive…"

* * *

Back at headquarters, X and Cleo had taken the damaged Robot Master to Lifesavor's lab and was joined by Signas, Alia, Douglas and Dr. Cain.

"Unit DRN-008, name: Elecman. Built by Dr. Thomas Light, reprogrammed by Dr. Albert Wily. His primary function was for the maintenance of power plants and other high energy systems while they were still in operation. Under Wily, he utilized his electrical powers to cause massive devastation and to reroute electric power for Wily's use. Despite being one of the older robots, he was still considered one of the most powerful in Wily's Army."

"Thank you for the history lesson, Cleo." Signas found the description a little boring. "Now, why is he still functional?"

Lifesavor stood up from examining Elecman. "I think Cleo may have hit the nail on the head. His main power comes from electricity."

The doctor robot walked over to a large display panel and a schematic of Elecman's damaged body appeared. A series of wires and components scattered throughout his body were highlighted. 

"This is the Atomic Energy Controller, or A.E.C. A rather ingenious invention of Dr. Light's. This is what allows Elecman to work inside high energy environments like power plants, and gives him the ability to command lighting bolts at a whim. Most robots that have this ability need huge power supplies and large capacitors, but the A.E.C. allows Elecman to summon electricity from any source, even the electrons in the air are at his disposal. It must have been feeding Elecman energy from nearby sources, like the other robots' residual energy and giving it to him to sustain him. I must say, Light was a genius, the A.E.C. is integrated so perfectly, I can't tell if he installed it in Elecman, or if he built Elecman around it."

"Can you repair him?"

Lifesavor turned to X. "I don't think so, he's too far gone. I can keep him alive, but if you want to save him, he'll need a whole new body."

Signas raised his arm. "Hold it. X, do you want to revive this robot?"

"I know, he worked for Wily, but Wily reprogrammed him. He's not responsible for what happened, he deserves a chance."

Alia protested. "X, I don't think that's such a good idea. First, how could he fit in, he's just a machine, he doesn't have real emotions. And if you want to rebuild him into a reploid, how will he deal with emotions. I think it's best that we shut him down and let him rest with the other robots."

"He deserves more than that."

Signas walked up to X. "Look, I know he was made by Dr. Light, and is sort of like a brother to you. I think you believe that he might replace Zero. Well, I'm telling you it won't happen, you just can't expect someone totally new to come in and replace an old friend."

X didn't answer, he simply tilted his head down.

"We all miss Zero, we all want him back. Even though Wily built Zero and he denounced his creator, that doesn't mean that Elecman will change and become someone new. And even then, he can never replace Zero."

X lifted his head and looked straight into Signas' eyes. Singas looked back into X's.

Barely turning his attention away from X, Signas called out. "Lifesavor, I want you to go through his systems and make sure he isn't infected with the Nightmare virus, then you and Douglas commence work on a new body."

"Yes, sir."

X bowed his head, "Thank you, commander."

Signas turned back to X. "I hope you know what you're doing. I'll be holding you responsible for him."

"I understand."

Cleo, Alia and Signas walked around the partition in Lifesavor's lab and left by the main door. Dr Cain and X moved to the table while Lifesavor started the tests.

"You've grown so much X, but there are times when you still seem as distraught and directionless as you were when you woke up."

Outside, the door opened again. "Lifesavor?!"

Lifesavor looked up, and walked around the partition separating a small private area for Elecman. "Oh no, not again."

In the main area, two Hunters walked in. One was a fairly tall raccoon with four arms, he was helping a smaller skunk who was hopping on one foot.

"What happened this time?"

"Routine training. Pheromone fell from the sliding platform simulator and got her leg crushed between two of them." The skunk in question held up her missing left foot.

"Katie, Katie, Katie. What are we going to do with you…" Lifesavor took the injured Hunter and escorted her to a nearby bed. "Thank you Spinstar, that'll be all."

The raccoon saluted with his upper right hand, turned around and left.

Back behind the partition, Douglas returned to X and Dr. Cain after peeking out to see the commotion. "It's Katie again, looks like she busted her leg this time."

Lifesavor was inspecting the damaged appendage. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to wait a bit. I've got a rather serious case I'm working on right now so you'll just have to sit tight. Lay down and get some rest."

Katie laid down on her right, lifted her damaged leg over her good one, and wrapped her large tail around her. Lifesavor went back to the others behind the partition.

"That girl is more accident prone than a gang of bumbling circus clowns at a demolition site." Cain turned towards X. "You really should reassign her."

"She won't take another assignment. I keep ordering her to take a desk job, but she wants nothing to do with it. One of these days I'm going to have to put my foot down, probably on hers."

Lifesavor turned to X. "Now come on, she's getting better, and she isn't getting as badly damaged as she used to."

X snapped back sarcastically. "Well, when you consider the first time she came back from a mission she was sliced in half at the mid-section and had both her arms blown off, I can see how she couldn't get much worse." X chuckled a bit. "Alright, I admit it, even she doesn't come close to how badly I've returned from missions."

"Actually, I figure that if she gets into one more serious accident that involves having at least one appendage mutilated and another torn off, she'll have surpassed you in need of the most repairs."

X's eyes opened wide as he stared at Lifesavor. "You're kidding, she only signed up 3 months ago."

X and Dr. Cain left the enclosure, passing Katie as they approached the door.

"Another accident, Katie?"

"X?! No, just a scratch."

X looked at her detached foot as Dr. Cain left. "A 'scratch', eh?"

"Please don't take me off the force. I can do it. I've had successful missions. I'm a hard worker."

"Alright, alright! Quit your bawling, I won't move you. But I really wish you would reconsider." X left Katie to rest.

"All I want is to be a Hunter. I'll show him."

* * *

That night, Katie rested in the infirmary. Lifesavor had gotten around to reattaching her leg, but the welds still hadn't set and she needed time for her internal systems to fully repair the damage. She just laid there, pondering her future.

{But I am a good Hunter. So what if I take a few hits. It's better than what I used to do.}

{All the damage I take, it's just a matter of time before I bite the big one. I should just quit and find a nice quiet job somewhere. Maybe a daycare worker or something.}

{That's boring, and danger is the risk that we have to take to be a Hunter, and that's where the glory and recognition come from.}

Katie was tired of arguing with herself. She wanted to do this so badly, but even she wasn't sure about the risks she was taking. As she laid there, she noticed a soft light emanating from behind the partition. That was where Lifesavor was working when she came in earlier. Unable to sleep, she got up and limped over to see who or what was there.

Behind the wall, she saw the mangled body of a robot laying on a table with wires sticking out of his chest, arms and legs.

"Oh, goodness. Are you… are you alright?"

The body didn't respond, So Katie moved closer. As she approached, Elecman's eyes fluttered open, and tried to look upon the creature moving towards him. With the famous cat's eyes styled mask he used to wear torn in half-the right half bent backwards while the left half was missing-Elecman could see her approach without having to move his head.

"Awake are we?"

Elecman only blinked, but the visitor wasn't dismayed.

"Hi, my name is Pheromone Skunk, but the last three digits of my serial number are 'K8E' so everyone calls me 'Katie' for short."

The disfigured Robot Master tried to reply, but his voice was crackled and broken. "I… ammmm… Elec-c-c-cmaan."

"'Elecman'? I think I've heard that name somewhere." Katie shrugged it off and continued to talk.

"So, what happened to you. Did some Mavericks do this, or was it an accident like me."

Elecman didn't respond.

"O.K. Maybe it's best you just lie there. But tell me if you find me boring."

Elecman blinked.

"Don't worry about your injuries, Lifesavor is the best, he fixes me up." Katie got a little over confident and tried standing straight up. "Ack, like my foot." She started to limp again.

"So, are you in pain?"

This time, she drew a very robotic but clear vocal response. "No, I cannot feel anything. My sensory adapters have been disabled."

Katie jolted when she realized that the voice was coming from the table Elecman was resting on.

"Oh, they connected you to the table. Very good, now we can talk."

She got another robotic response. "About what?"

"Well, like, where are you from? What do you do? I'll start. I was activated about a year ago, and I started out as a dancer, a beautiful, graceful creature who flowed with the music."

"That is nice. How did you come to join the Hunters?"

"Well, actually it wasn't nice. My kind of dancing was more for the seedy side of the 'entertainment industry' rather than the high class artsy stuff. You know, strutting in front of a bunch of rabid guys, human and reploid, who look like they've never seen a female before. Ogling me and my rather shapely design. A bunch of perverts if you ask me. My friends call them 'furverts', with me being a skunk and all. Anyway, I got bored with being just some pretty face and wanted a job with respect. So I joined the Hunters, unfortunately, I'm the one who usually ends up getting hunted."

"I was created for maintenance of large scale power facilities. I was designed to withstand high electrical discharges."

"Really, that would explain the name. You from around here?"

"I do not know where 'here' is."

"Oh."

Elecman thought for a moment, trying to strike up some kind of small talk of his own. "'Katie' is it? That is a nice name. Interesting. Your serial number ends in '8E'. I was the 8th in a series and my name commences with 'E'. Actually, I would be 9th if you count the prototype."

"Really, were the others in your series designed for the same function as you?"

"Negative. We were all built for different functions."

"And where are they now? Do you know?"

"Affirmative. They have been terminated."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"'Sorry'?"

"Yeah, I mean, it must be hard to lose your friends, how ever they died."

Elecman was confused, he didn't feel sorry, grief or regret.

"I see I've touched a nerve with that. I think it's getting late and I think we both need some sleep. I'm sure Lifesavor will fix you up good tomorrow, there's no need to be scared."

Katie limped back to her bed and laid down, leaving Elecman with his thoughts.

{'Sorry', 'scared' what does she mean? I don't feel anything?}

To be continued


	4. The Last Upgrade

**The Last Standing**

**A Megaman X fanfiction by Black Mantle**

This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Capcom and are used without permission. Cleo, Dash, Katie, Spinstar are © Black Mantle.

_**The Last Upgrade**_

The next morning, Katie's leg had totally healed and she was on her way. Lifesavor and Douglas were working in the enclosure where Elecman was kept and she couldn't get in to see him again.

For the rest of the day, she spent all her free time trying to find out more about the mysterious robot in the infirmary. No one else around the office knew about him, except when she crossed Dash. He seemed to know something, but gave her pretty vague answers. All he said was that he helped rescue him, but not much else. Katie was a little miffed by the lack of information, but continued her search, this time online.

Sitting at a desk at Hunter HQ, she started a search through the database for "Elecman". After a few seconds, the reply came back empty.

"Nothing? Are you telling me this guy doesn't exist? Let's try a general search."

Katie tried a second search, this time sending the request throughout the internet, looking for any match to the name "Elecman". This time, she received a handful of matches.

"I figure I would have gotten more than that. Let's see."

Before Katie could make a selection, a hand moved forward and hit the power button on the monitor.

"Hey, what are you…?"

Katie turned around to see X standing behind her.

"X? What's wrong?"

"I know what you're doing, and I have to ask you not to."

The skunk tried to plead with him. "But X, I…"

"I saw the security tape from last night in the infirmary, and you've been asking a lot of questions. So I'll tell you what I told Arm, Cleo and Dash, don't go talking about it, at least, not now."

"But, what is this about…" Katie's head sunk down in realization. "You won't tell me."

"I can see you're not about to be swayed and you'll probably find out eventually. Just don't tell anybody about this. Got it."

Katie nodded, and X reached over and turned the monitor back on before he left. She looked back on the screen to the list of links that her previous search had relinquished. As she looked through the links, she noticed most of them had some very old dates, and some unusual titles.

{"Dr. Light", "Dr. Wily"? What, but those are… "DRN-008: Elecman, Minster Robotics Institute archives - official registration."}

Katie selected the option from the Minster Institute, and started reading.

* * *

Two days later, Elecman's eyes opened. He was now looking out over several faces that he was getting familiar with. X, Lifesavor, Douglas, Signas and Dr. Cain.

Lifesavor was checking on Elecman, running scans on him. "How are you feeling? Can you move?"

Elecman could feel his hands gripping some guide rails on either side of him. Slowly, he pulled his right hand away and balanced on his left. He then let go with his left and stood up on his own. He looked down and brought his hands into his visual range. His old hands where red, but these where white with a bit of yellow on the thumbs and index fingers. And his forearms bore a strange cylindrical arm guard with a rippled pattern on them.

"Alright, can you walk?"

Elecman tried to slowly move his right foot, just a few inches at first, then his left. After a few small baby steps, Elecman started to walk more confidently. He looked down at his feet, they too were not his, black and a bit of gray.

"There's a mirror over there if you'd like to see yourself."

Elecman looked over to his right to the full size mirror on the wall. Bracing himself, he walked over. Not wanting to look at first, he opened his eyes to take it in. Standing in front of him, was a totally new robot.

His face was no longer flesh colored, it was gray though it appeared to have a bluish tinge, except for the lightning bolt patterns streaking down his face, starting at each eye. The mask with the cat's eyes pattern and lightning bolt in the middle he often wore was now gone, but a large yellow bolt was painted on his black helmet, and each side of his head were shaped to a point, just like his mask did.

Further down, his black chest plate with the lightning bolt symbol was also gone, in it's place was a yellow, more circular plate with a round black jewel on it. The jewel bore a picture of lightning, unlike the other markings which were the "Z" shaped lightning icons. Furthermore, his whole body was covered in black, before, only the lower half was black while the top half was red. Only a few other decorations broke up the black motif below the chest plate, a thin yellow line extended down the middle of his torso between his legs. His knees were marked by a pair of gray knee pads and the soles of his feet were yellow.

Then he noticed something on his back. Turning 90° to get a better look, he noticed four large electrical pylons sticking out. Now he recognized the pattern of his arm guards, they too were like the electrical pylons, only they were cylindrical instead of conical.

[Author's note: In case you didn't get the imagery or didn't play the game, Elecman's new body is based on his Megaman Battle Network incarnation; Elecman.EXE.]

Elecman stood there for a moment to take it all in.

X walked up behind him. "What do you think?"

Elecman parted his lips and tried to speak. What came out was in a semi-synthetic tone, like a human voice that was recorded and played back with a modest digital transfer rate. "I… I think I like it."

He continued to check every little detail of his new form. "It's very nice. Different. Unusual. Very…"

He had trouble coming up with a word to truly capture the feel of his new self. Then it hit him, a very strange word that he would never have thought of before.

"Alien."

Elecman had no idea why he would use such a word. Before now, all he knew of the term "alien" was in reference to something that didn't belong; a person from a different country or little green men in a sci-fi movie. He had no idea why he would use such a term to describe himself, it just felt like the right word.

"Alien, huh?" X stroked his chin. "I think all you need is some time to get used to it. Come on, let's take a walk around the place and introduce you to everyone."

Elecman was a little unsure, but went along with it.

* * *

The two walked out into the hallway, there was no one there at the time, so they just started out in whatever direction.

"Tell me, you ARE Megaman X, correct?"

"That's right. But you can call me 'X', everyone does." 

Elecman gave X a questioning glance.

"So, what you know about me?"

"Very little. I know that you were created by Dr. Light, and that Dr. Wily had created a robot like you, based on plans that he had stolen."

"You mean Zero. I already know."

"You have met Zero then?"

"Yep, he became a Hunter like me. We fought together many times."

"That would be strange. He was created to destroy you, and implanted with a powerful virus to destroy all humanity."

"I know that too. The virus was passed to another, and Zero is now searching for a way to purge himself of it. I haven't seen him since."

Elecman muttered to himself. "He destroyed… so many of them."

"Huh?"

Elecman jolted. "I'm sorry, I was thinking about something."

{There's that word, "sorry".}

"You said he destroyed so many of them. You mean Wily's other robots."

"Yes. He tried to activate Zero in order to use him as a weapon against Megaman, but he could not be controlled and went berserk. It took almost 30 of us to bring him down, 17 didn't survive. Stoneman, Gutsman, Gyroman, Woodman… Waveman, Quick…" Elecman couldn't continue, something was causing him to seize up, he didn't understand what.

X tried to comfort him. "Hey, hey, calm down. It must have been horrible."

Elecman's composure returned. "The operation was a disaster."

"Look, if you don't want to talk about it anymore, that's fine with me."

Elecman didn't respond, he was getting a confusing series of signals from his sensors, as if numerous components were malfunctioning all at the same time. After a few seconds, his systems seemed to recover as his thoughts turned away from the fateful day that left him a near dead shell in Wily's Lab.

"You O.K?"

For some reason, Elecman didn't want to tell X about his recent lapse, it felt as if it was something that should be kept secret. Another strange thought crossed his mind, why were he and X being rather friendly with each other. Had this been a different time and place, had they been their previous selves, they would probably be tearing up this place in a heated battle right now. Standing a good foot taller than X, he figured he could probably scrap the little bugger in a minute. But something was different, it was as if the instruction to attack this new Megaman was not in his programming. Was he reprogrammed? They had told him that by upgrading him to a reploid, he would definitely feel very different, but he never really understood. It wasn't so much that he couldn't attack him, but it was like a small quiet voice was whispering to him: "You shouldn't do that."

"No, it's nothing. I'm just getting used to the new body."

He looked over to X. Although X appeared to take the statement at face value, something told Elecman that X wasn't totally satisfied with the false answer.

* * *

A set of double doors slid open into a large room where shouts and cries where resonating around the walls. Inside were several dozen Hunters engaged in various activities of physical endurance and aptitude.

One figure stood out from the others. "No, no, no! Keep your center of gravity low! Bend more at the knees, get your center to the ground!"

"Spinstar!"

The central figure turned around to see X and a newcomer entering through the main doors.

"Keep practicing, and try putting more weight on your left foot." The instructor left the reploids he was working with and went over to the two by the door.

Elecman took notice of the odd figure, aside from the fact that he had four arms and stood as tall as him, he was a raccoon. The animal parts were gray and black with orange and black armor. At the center of his chest was a diagonal cross pattern polished a brilliant silver. It looked rather decorative, but it also resembled a series of four handles, arranged at the diagonal positions of a compass.

"X!" Spinstar saluted like a perfect soldier. "Is this a new recruit?"

"No, he's just a friend. Just showing him around in case he's interested."

The raccoon turned to Elecman in a very sharp maneuver. "Spinstar Raccoon, I train the Hunters in means of combat and physical aptitude." He stuck his hand out to Elecman to shake. Elecman hesitated a bit but took it.

"Hey, Dash!" X turned to Spinstar. "May I have a word with Dash for a moment?"

Spinstar agreed, not wanting to argue with a superior, he flagged Dash over. Spinstar left with a salute while Dash came over. Elecman threw his arm up, as if to return the salute, but really had no idea what he was doing.

"Hey X, what's up?" He then took a look at the larger robot next to him. "Is that…?"

"Dash, meet Elecman."

"Elecman?" Dash reached out and shook his hand. "Nice to see you up and about. When we first found you, I thought it was just as well to drop you off at the scrap heap."

Dash chuckled a bit. Elecman felt a little insecure over the comment. Here was a guy who told him that he was destined for the junk pile. Yet, somehow the odd laugh was telling him to ignore the comment.

"Well, I appreciate you not following your initial diagnosis." Elecman tried to smile, as if to reply to the laugh.

"So, any idea as to what your going to do?"

"How do you mean?"

X jumped in. "For crying out loud, we brought him online less than an hour ago. Give him a chance to figure it out."

"Sorry. I'm sure you'll find your place soon enough."

Elecman was now a bit worried, before, you were programmed to be whatever you were. Now, he had a choice. He was expected to find a path for himself.

"I'd better be getting back to my training, X." Dash saluted the elder Hunter.

"Right, and Dash, remember, don't tell anyone about you-know-what."

"Yes sir!"

Dash left the two.

"Come on, we'll hit the cafeteria for some lunch. You haven't had anything to eat yet, have you?" X paused. "And don't worry, I know all this seems pretty strange, but you'll find your place."

The two left the gym. X's words didn't make Elecman feel too much better, but they had a different impact on the former.

{You've been a Hunter for years, you haven't found your place.}

* * *

Katie had just come off duty and decided to take a quick drop in to the infirmary. She had trouble getting in before and she knew why. But none the less, she wanted to see Elecman again, to see how he was doing, aside from being paralyzed and lying on a table.

This time, something was different. First of all, she got in easily. She walked over to Lifesavor who was writing some reports at his desk.

"Ah, Katie. What happened this time."

"Oh, nothing much. I took down a rogue TV camera, and got a dent in my side, but nothing serious, you don't have to bother with it." Katie pointed to a small dent in her armor in her left side.

"A dent? My, that's not like you. But I'll take care of it anyway."

Katie was looking around the room, the infirmary was empty and the partition that was set up earlier was gone. "Uh, Lifesavor? Where, uh…"

"What is it?" Lifesavor was walking over to a table of instruments.

"Well, I was… um… looking for something and…"

"Go on."

Katie sighed, too embarrassed to ask. "Oh, never mind."

"X took him out on a trial run of his new body." Lifesavor turned around holding a small instrument. "Alright, now about that dent."

Katie was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

This was Elecman's first time in a cafeteria that didn't involve blowing it up. It was strange for him to see robot's eating food, but it certainly didn't look like the food he'd seen in the old days.

"With robots acting more and more like humans, most of them wanted to experience more of what humans do, like eating. Many weren't content with simple fuel for their fusion generators, and wanted to feel the 'dining experience' like humans do."

"Interesting, in my day, there were compacted energy forms in a liquid state that robots could drink, but not solid."

"Well, now we have solid food. You want anything?"

"No, not really."

"Well, to each his own." X noticed something. "Speaking of which."

X guided Elecman over to a table where two hunters were seated. On one side is Arm, with a very large meal that resembles a submarine sandwich. The other was buried behind a giant mass of food stuffs, but quickly revealed himself as he scarfed the food down in seconds.

"This is Armored Armadillo or 'Arm', he was with me and Dash when we found you, and this rather well fed beast is Wheel Gator. Guys, this is Elecman. He's a friend of mine and just hanging out here for a while until he gets straightened out."

"Hi there."

Gator only replied with a deep grumble as he continued to digest his feast.

Elecman waved. "Hi."

"Both of them were Mavericks who were rebuilt and purged of the Nightmare virus. And both are costing us a fortune in their dining habits."

"Hey, we need a lot of energy to do our jobs you know." Arm took the mighty sandwich and stuffed it in his face.

X nudged Elecman in the arm. "Over there, that's Cleo."

The pair walked over to the table where only one Hunter sat. Cleo was sitting rather peacefully, eating her meal with a delicate manner Elecman had never seen before.

"X. And who is this? Though I must say his appearance bares a certain familiarity."

X sits down. "Cleo, this is Elecman. I'm sure you remember him."

"Oh yes, how could I not, after the scare you gave Arm the other day."

"Pardon?"

X smirked. "Arm was the one who found you. When you reached out for him, he thought the dead were rising from the grave. He's definitely been playing too much 'Resident Evil'." X made a quick addition to avoid the impending question. "It's a video game, I'll explain later."

"So, what's it like on your first day functioning after so long."

Elecman thought for a moment. "It is… liberating, I suppose. But, I am having some trouble adjusting."

Cleo focused on X, in a "you should have listened" tone. "Alia was talking about this earlier. Elecman here was an ordinary robot, no emotions or feelings, and now he has them." 

She turned back to the confused reploid. "I'm sure you'll get used to them, you'll have to. But it'll be tough for the first little while so don't hesitate to ask any questions, even though you may feel you don't want to. Just try to find someone your comfortable with, but I suggest you don't confide in just anybody, only a few of us really know who you are."

"Are you offering your assistance?"

"If you want. But X seems to know you better, or is he a little too close to you?"

Cleo's voice was both reassuring and unnerving. Her voice was calm and warm and it seemed to appease the various fears that he was building over the last hour, but her intimate knowledge of what he was feeling made him even more uneasy. At the same time, he felt that she would be best person to talk to, and was the last person he wanted to talk with.

{These emotions are so confusing.}

"You want to stick around here or check out the rest of the place?"

"I would like to look around a bit more."

"Right. See ya, Cleo."

"So long."

* * *

X and Elecman continued their tour of the base.

"You're still confused, aren't you?"

"That's about the only thing I truly understand."

"It wasn't easy for me either. When I woke up, I felt totally out of place too."

"It's not so much being 'out of place' rather, everything is wrong. I don't recognize anything, I don't even recognize myself. Here I am, talking with you, in another time, we'd be mortal enemies."

"But this isn't that time, this is the here and now."

"It goes far beyond just you and me. Or rather, this is all about me. I don't think even you could truly appreciate what I am going through."

X sighed. "You're right, I don't. Look, Elecman…"

"Stop."

X furled his brow questioningly.

"I am not 'Elecman', he died this morning on that table, then I was born."

"Hey X! Wait up."

X and friend turned around to see a blur running towards them and grinding to a halt in front of them.

"X, I've been looking all over for you and…" Katie stood in amazement, looking up at the dark stranger with her superior. "Oh, hi. Remember me?"

He smiled. "Yes, Ms. Pheromone Skunk, also known as 'Katie' to her friends because the last 3 digits in your serial number are 'K8E'."

"Right. And you're…"

"Please, just call me 'E'."

"'E'? Well that does roll off the tongue, doesn't it?"

E wasn't sure what it was about Katie, she was certainly unusual to say the least. Her appearance seemed strange, all his memories were of more human-like robots, an anthropomorphic skunk was rather odd. This was especially true for the green color scheme, dark green where there should be black, pale green where there should be white. But it wasn't her appearance that sparked something in him, it was her persona. Quirky and energetic, and hopelessly accident prone, E remembered when she limped over to his bed side on that first night and tried to comfort him, despite the fact that he couldn't feel comfort.

Seeing the two just standing there, X decided to break the ice. "So, Katie, just get off duty?"

"Yeah, about half an hour ago."

"Incredible, you barely have scratch on you. Lifesavor must be getting really fast with repairs."

"X! You're horrible!" The skunk brought her hand up to scratch the back of her head. "So, what are you doing later?"

"I haven't decided, I only just woke up. All this is so strange to me and I don't know what to make of it. The Hunters seem to be rather interesting, but I'm not sure if…"

"No silly, I mean are you doing anything later today? Just going to hang around here? Going to check out the town? Though it's not like there's much to see."

"Oh, well, I don't know."

"Well, I wanted to go out and do a little shopping later. If you wanted to join me?"

X couldn't help himself. "I'm sure he will. I've got work to take care of, and there isn't to much left to see in here anyway. Say an hour?"

"Sure, I've got to get something to eat and clean up." Katie stood there for a second. "Well, see ya in an hour."

Katie waved, and skipped away.

X was left smiling while E was a little stunned as to what just happened.

"Why did you say I would go with her? Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"A little bit, but you really could stand to meet some people." X let out a sigh. "I suppose I should too."

E was still looking on rather vacantly.

"So, you like her?"

"She's seems very kind… and friendly. I suppose I should try to treat her the same way."

"No, no. I mean: do you _like_ her?"

X's implication totally escaped him.

To be continued


	5. The Last World

**The Last Standing**

**A Megaman X fanfiction by Black Mantle**

This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Capcom and are used without permission. Cleo, Dash, Katie, Spinstar are © Black Mantle.

_**The Last World**_

The rest of the tour was pretty short and uneventful. X took E around to meet more of the Hunters, through the communication center to meet Alia, and finished by taking him to an empty room that E could stay in. He wouldn't have much time to get familiar with the unfurnished quarters as Katie came to bring him shopping with her.

X smiled as he waved goodbye.

* * *

The pair had borrowed one of the Hunter's unmarked vehicles and started the tour of the "city". It was definitely not like any city Elecman remembered, this one was totally underground. When he queried Katie about it, he learned the sordid story of how Sigma's recent attacks and the global spread of the Nightmare virus had left the surface almost uninhabitable. Although a cure for the Nightmare virus was created by Lifesavor, and X had defeated Sigma-for now, it would be years before the surface would be safe for humans again.

This was definitely a different world than he originally came from, even Wily's wildest ambitions during his life never had the impact of the one that survived his death. Wily wanted to punish the world for defying him, and he did it.

This underground world was much darker than the overground world that Elecman remembered, lit only by a series of high powered lights instead of the great Sun. Street lights had to be left on 24-hours, and the only real way to know the time was to check a clock. Katie drove the car through the streets of the city, showing E massive carved out areas that used to be the foundations of the buildings when they lived above ground. Most of the buildings still stood above the surface, but the only way to enter and exit was through the Earth.

Eventually, Katie entered a large structure, inside were thousands of cars parked in long rows. Finding an empty spot marked by the lines on the pavement, Katie stopped the car, and she and E got out. As he stepped out, a series of compacted machine parts on his back reoriented themselves to reform the four pylons that he had been built with.

E was still a little dumbstruck by how humanity had adapted to living underground. Before, Elecman had always seen humans as weak, helpless creatures, who relied on robots for anything that would inconvenience their fat, lazy bodies, except for Wily that is. But the humans had adapted, although he was sure the reploids did most of the actual work, he had to admit that the humans weren't as weak as he originally believed.

* * *

Once inside, E finally saw the energy and life that he remembered from so long ago. The mall seemed to be like a circus compared to the drab streets they took to get here. There were people and reploids everywhere, shops as far as the eye could see, and the whole place was filled with talking, the beeping of cash registers, crying babies, and other noise.

"Well, come on, there's no point in just standing around here with our jaws hanging down." Katie grabbed E by the arm and dragged him around the mall.

* * *

The first store they entered was a clothing store. Reploids generally didn't wear clothes, but the odd accessory certainly added a nice personal touch that they weren't created with. Katie went in looking around at the hats and tried a few on, occasionally asking E for his opinion while looking at herself in one of the long mirrors.

"So, what do you think of this one?"

Just like the first 15 times, E hesitated to answer, but was starting to get used to being asked for fashion advice.

{Rule 1: What you think doesn't really matter.}

"It looks a little too frilly, but the color is nice."

Whether E liked it or not, Katie put the hat back with the others and tried another one. This one was a nice mellow yellow and bore a wide brim, shading her face.

"This one looks good on me."

"Under these lights it looks very good on you. But outside, it's not like the shade is really necessary."

Katie didn't care about outside, she liked how she looked with the hat on in the store. Satisfied with the hat, Katie started to look around for other accessories and found herself looking at the scarves.

* * *

The next store they went to was another clothing store, this one was much less high brow than the last and had more casual clothing in it. Most of the clothes were made for humans, as is expected, but Katie instantly went towards the sweaters, large loose fitting garments that would easy glide over her metallic frame.

Color was clearly important, since unlike humans with the rather plain flesh tone, her skin was green. She stuck with the warmer colors like yellow and red. Her eye first glanced on a mustard colored number with black stitching. E thought it stood out quite a bit from her normal color, but didn't create something unappealing. Her second choice was a dark red and green number. The color combination seemed a little familiar. He remembered so long ago, a holiday called Christmas, and red and green was a color combination often associated with it. It was probably still celebrated to this day.

{What day was that, December 25th? What is today?}

E's internal chronometer told him it was mid August. He then realized that the main way of telling the time was by looking outside. The position of the Sun, and the seasons told you the time of day, and the time of year. But underground, that was not possible.

"Come, on! What do you think of this one?"

E snapped back to look at a miffed Katie. "Oh, sorry, I was just…"

"Now come off it. You're supposed to be helping me shop, not wandering around in Daydream Happy Land."

{"Daydream Happy Land"?}

"I was just thinking of how that sweater reminds me of Christmas."

Katie giggled a bit. "Yeah, I guess it does look rather 'seasonal'. I'll just wait until winter to wear it, it's not too far off you know."

"Right."

Katie grabbed the sweater and a few others she picked up while E's mind wandered and handed them to him.

"Maybe we should get you something while we're here."

"I have no money."

Katie gasped, remembering that E had only just been reactivated. "That's right. Don't worry, my treat."

"No, that's really not necessary."

"Come on, a nice sweater or jacket or something, it'll look really good on you."

E wondered what he would look good in, then looked behind him. Katie saw it too, the large pylons sticking out of his back.

"I guess any kind of shirt or coat is out of the question, huh? Oh well, let's at least take care of me then."

* * *

Katie paid for the sweaters and dragged E into another shop, this one was a perfume and body shop. The racks were filled with scented oils and soaps, and of course for the reploid crowd, various polishes and paints.

E stood there carrying two armfuls of shopping bags while Katie went over the brightly colored bottles. He then looked over where a human noticed him, a fairly tall, well built man, about his size. A few feet away, another human, a female was taking part in the same eerie pageant that Katie was involved in.

"So, your girlfriend dragged you off too, huh?" The human male smirked when he said it.

"Uh, yeah. I still have no idea how I ended up here."

"Welcome aboard."

The human was called away by him female counterpart, leaving E to turn back towards Katie and the lady behind the counter.

{Rule 2: In the mall, boyfriends are slaves.}

* * *

E was even more in awe than when he came in. Decades ago, he could never understand shopping to be anything more than a supply run, just going out to exchange monetary credit for goods and services. But now it seemed more than that, it seemed like a whole society in and of itself, totally disjoint from the rest of civilization.

* * *

Katie brought E into a totally different store next, a music store. She went sifting through the stacks of memory chips neatly arranged on the tables. E liked the new store, but he still felt a bit silly carrying all of Katie's previous purchases.

As she continued to sort through the albums, she eventually moved over to the sampler station on the wall and picked up the earphones.

"Ooo… Hey, listen to this. Something classical."

Katie held up the earphones while E tried to listen in. The noise that belted out sounded like a car full of cats in heat being forced through a paper shredder.

"Is that 'Sin Smelter'? I can't believe you call that 'classical'."

"Are you kidding? They've been around for like, forever."

"I can tell you exactly how long too. They were still touring when I was first built."

"Really. Well, I guess it's true what they say, everything goes out of style and comes back in every 30 years."

{30 years… No, it's been longer, it's been sixty years since that day. I can't believe how much time has passed, how long I have been laying as a piece of scrap metal in a forgotten lab like an ancient king buried in a lost tomb.}

"You're telling me that anything half a century old is considered 'classical'?" E thought about bands that were around 60 years old when he was still Elecman. "Well, all I know is that when I was around, guys like the 'Bare Naked Ladies' and 'Andrew W. K.' were NOT considered classical."

"Well, all I know is… they are now."

Katie pointed just down the row a bit and sure enough, both names were in the "Classical" section.

"I am feeling very old right now."

* * *

After shopping for more than three hours and definitely putting E's arms well beyond the factory specified limits, the pair sat down at a small dessert shop in the food court. E tried to sit down, but had to hunch over to keep his pylons off the hard back of the chair, despite folding them up again, they were too uncomfortable to rest on them. Katie went over and ordered two parfaits and brought them over.

"What are these?"

"There called 'parfaits', that's French for 'perfect'. I think."

"Is this blue ice cream?"

"It's vanilla. Of course, we can't eat regular vanilla ice cream, but it tastes the same."

"Oh yeah, like the 'food' in the cafeteria at Hunter HQ."

"Right."

"But it's blue."

"So what? You should see what color chocolate is."

E's eyes opened wide wondering what weird color that particular flavor was. Ignoring it for now, he dipped into the pile of blue ice cream with the spoon, and took a taste.

"Katie?"

Katie looked behind her to see several females moving in on her. Two of them were human, the other two were reploids, one was human like, the other was a fox, literally.

"Maggie, Bess, Lisa, Sonya! What are you doing here?"

"The same as you. And who is this?"

The four girls looked over at the large bot that Katie was with.

"Oh, this is E." Katie said with a smile and an extra bit of chipperness in her voice.

The four of them called in unison. "Hi."

E felt a little strange, like he wanted to run and hide, instead, he shyly raised his right hand and wiggled his fingers in a half-wave. "Hello."

"Hey Katie, where'd you meet this guy?"

"He's a friend of X's."

"So, you're so desperate that you need to get set up by your unit leader now."

"Oh come off it! X wouldn't set me up with a toaster oven. Actually, he probably _would_ set me up with a toaster oven."

The human reploid poked Katie in the shoulder. "And how come we've never seen him before."

"We just met."

"And you're taking him shopping? My, aren't we quick." One of the humans moved towards E. "So, what do you do?"

E certainly wasn't going to give her the whole history and scrambled to give some semblance of an answer, hopefully one so boring he wouldn't get queried again. "I used to work in maintenance, but you might say I'm between jobs right now."

"Oh, a mooch are you?"

E looked on, trying to understand the term "mooch".

"Leave him alone, he's had a rough go over the last few days."

The human still standing asked. "Why, what happened?"

"He was in an accident, a Maverick attack I think. He needed his whole body rebuilt from scratch."

E held back his utter shock that Katie would start telling them such a thing. Not that it wasn't true, he thought it was a good cover, but that she would just blurt out such a personal story to someone he had never met.

"Oh my goodness, you certainly are lucky. What happened to you?"

E tried to dodge the question, again hoping he would not be bothered further. Speaking in a very somber voice, "I really don't want to talk about it." He took a spoonful of the dessert in front of him and brought it to his mouth.

The human seemed to regret asking the question. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude."

Back at Katie, the foxy reploid whispered into her ear. "I should have known you'd meet someone as accident prone as you."

Katie almost gagged on the spoon in her mouth. "Lisa?!"

The girls hung around for another 15 minutes gabbing with Katie, although to E it felt like 15 hours. He quietly ate his dessert, but still had to dodge a few questions, offering up a few false answers when necessary, hoping that he didn't paint himself into a corner.

Eventually the others got up to leave.

"Well, come on girls, let's leave 'Ms. Nightingale' with her patient."

The five ladies exchanged a series of cheery salutations, and soon Katie was left alone with E.

"Old friends of yours I take it."

"Yeah, members of my _former_ profession. But we still keep in touch."

"Ah yes, dancers from the 'seedier' side of the industry."

Katie was a little perturbed that E would mention it. "Yeah. They seem to like you though."

"I noticed. I can't quite explain it, but it seemed like a test of some kind, or an inspection."

"In a way. They're just friends and they want to catch up on what I'm doing now. To find out about my job, my friends…" Katie muttered off. "I hope they didn't embarrass you or anything."

"No, not really."

E looked at her questioningly, but didn't want to converse any further regarding the four hens that just departed. Although they spoke mostly with Katie, the questions they were asking him were getting rather deep and personal, and many of the questions fielded to their former colleague featured him as the main topic. They were probing, trying to determine everything they could about him, and more importantly, what kind of relationship existed between him and Katie.

In the back of his mind, a rather nagging thought was haunting him; these four who passed, although they took great awareness of him, seemed to ignore him for the most part. Although they were quite probing in their questions, he felt like an object rather than a person; something that someone had just left there on the chair, possibly to return for it later, or perhaps forgotten all together.

E wondered if Katie thought of him as a person, or an object.

{Rule 2-addition: In the mall, boyfriends are also trophies.}

To be continued


	6. The Last Memory

**The Last Standing**

**A Megaman X fanfiction by Black Mantle**

This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Capcom and are used without permission. Cleo, Dash, Katie, Spinstar are © Black Mantle.

_**The Last Memory**_

The car pulled up to another building, like most of the others, it was primarily above ground, but new entrances had to be made to accommodate the new underground structure of the city.

"This is the museum. It's a nice place to visit, but a little sad, since it's a reminder of what was. It's almost always better than now." Katie was getting a bit depressed just thinking about it. "We don't have to go in if you don't want to."

E seemed in awe, he had to know. "No, I want to see this."

Katie was a little shocked by E's determination, before she was dragging the unsuspecting robot around, now _he_ wanted to go somewhere.

* * *

Katie paid for the two of them to enter the large structure, this time, E was too interested to feel ashamed of her offer to cover the door charge.

Inside E was examining everything, seeing bits of history locked away behind glass and recreated in holographic splendor. Katie was tagging along, trying to keep up with the reenergized robot as he quickly scampered through the exhibits. Rarely did he stop to really take in any of the exhibits, until he came to an art exhibit from the legendary artist, Picasso.

"Incredible."

"Do you like paintings?"

E didn't respond, he was losing himself in the strange and deformed pictures.

"I always wanted to experience this."

"So you've never been to an art exhibit, huh?"

"Oh no, I've been in museums and have seen art before, but that's it. I've only _seen_ them. Before now, I could never fathom why humans like to look at these pictures, especially these weird ones by Picasso."

Katie looked into the deformed artwork, a twisted image, both recognizable and not. To her the image spoke nothing, it simply was.

"I remember these as being nothing more than paint on a canvas, smatterings of color, random shapes bearing little resemblance to anything that could exist in the real world. It was something that I couldn't see, but to humans, they could, they found something in them that drew awe. Now I see it, I can really see it. No more are they confounding me, but they tell me things. They tell me about this man, Picasso, they tell me what he was like. They also tell me of his world, and the way in which he saw his world. For him, this was life, this was his interpretation of it. I understand them now."

To Katie, the art seemed nothing more than a piece of fabric with bright colors, but in a way, she understood the connection. For her, it was music. Instead of color, it was tone; instead of hue, it was volume; instead of Da Vinci, it was Beethoven. Sound was something that she bathed in, she would often curl up, not reading a book, but listening to the parade of notes that emanated from her stereo, filling the room with a potpourri of audible emotions. The romance of R&B, the energy of heavy metal, the peacefulness of renaissance, the power of opera, the spirit of gospel; she loved them all, all of them made her feel alive.

Katie looked at the Picasso again, she tried to see the color as she heard the music, to try and understand what Picasso tried to emphasize in his art, but it would not speak to her. In the museum, she felt like she was dead, as if there was a world out there that had cast her away and refused to open to her.

{Is this how E felt, how Elecman felt, without emotions?}

Katie looked over and realized that she had been staring at the art by herself.

"E? Where are you?"

A quick inspection of the hall revealed he was no longer at the Picasso exhibit.

"Damn it! I didn't leave you alone at the mall, did I?!"

Everyone turned and shushed her.

* * *

Elsewhere in the museum, E had entered a different exhibit, filled with holographic displays. The lights had been dimmed down for optimum clarity of the ghostly images. It would seem a futile effort as the room was vacant, no one seemed to be interested in the displays. As E approached the first vision, it felt as if time itself was slowing down, his systems seemed to speed up and his mind was clouded with an array of flashes and blurred scenes.

{Protoman.}

E stood in front of the image of his former comrade. Protoman was the first, the first Light had built, and the first Wily had reprogrammed, or tried to at least. Ultimately, Protoman's original programming broke through the grip Wily had on him. His hand reached out, towards the image, to prove to the world that Protoman was still very much alive. But his hopes were dashed as his hand passed through the false robot.

E stood there for another few seconds before leaving Protoman and heading to the next phantom, Cutman. He took another look back, realizing that in the proper order, two other robots would have been there. Knowing who they were, E figured they were in a different display. 

He shrugged it off, and turned back to the lumberjack robot. Again, E reached out with a finger to touch the large blades on the robot's head, but instead of cutting off his finger, it harmlessly passed through the metal. E moved on, past the bulky Gutsman and the cute Iceman. Next was Bombman.

"No, not you."

E raised his hand again, only to be disappointed again.

"This can't be my brother, why do you not answer? Why have you dared to taunt me like this?" The hologram would not answer, it simply stood in a battle pose, ready to launch it's imaginary explosive charge. 

"We were so close, you and I went through so much. Why am I here and you are not?"

Too scared to continue to look upon that smiling visage, E moved on. Fireman, then…

E gazed upon the most horrific image so far.

"It's you. How are we doing?"

The image that E recognized the most wouldn't answer either, instead he just stared back with a hateful glint in his eye. E was locked there, standing before him, ready to unleash his fury, was the image of his former self, the self that E recognized, the self that E didn't see in the mirror just that morning.

Unbelieving, he reached out one more time. He couldn't be dead, he couldn't be gone, he _was_ real. His touch told him otherwise.

{So, I'm dead too.}

* * *

Elsewhere in the museum, thanks to a few helpful answers from the museum staff, Katie was able to track E down. Entering the robotics exhibit, she approached the door leading into the holographic Wily exhibit, ready to chew E out something fierce. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him there, looking at himself, gazing upon what used to be him.

She took a few steps back, but kept the confused reploid in her line of sight.

* * *

"Do you like it?" E completed a spin in front of the hologram.

Elecman didn't answer.

"Yeah, it takes some getting used to, I only got it this morning and it still unnerves me a bit."

*sigh* 

"This really isn't how we pictured the future, is it? Then again, I guess our future was nothing more than defeat Megaman, and serve Wily until he corked off. Not much of a life I must say. I'm trying to figure out if this life is much better. I don't know anybody here, I don't know where I'm going, _I'm_ expected to find my own destiny you know. I'm alone here, I don't even have you. Everybody's left me." E tilted his head down for a second. "Wait a minute, I'll be back."

E left his former self as he checked out the rest of the collection.

"Metalman, Airman, Bubbleman… I'm ashamed of you my wet suited cohort, your attraction to water kept us apart and I never knew you very well. I pity there is nothing for me to remember of you."

"Quickman. I remember you well." E smiled shortly. "I remember you telling me that you could outrun anything, so I decided to test that. You couldn't outrun my bolts. We fought right from the start. You swore, that you would prove that you were faster than anything. We never got along, but in a way, I think we were very good friends."

"Crashman, Flashman, Heatman, Woodman." E finished recounting the second army and moved to the third, repeating the procedure.

"Needleman, Magnetman, Geminiman, Hardman, Topman, Sssss-snakeman, Sparkman, Shadowman."

E stopped. "You liked to hide in darkness, avoided the light, it was your nature. You were silent, rarely if ever talked. Your purpose was to go unnoticed. And yet, you may end up as the one I remember the most. Tell me, do you continue to stalk the shadows? Do you still hide, even on the other side? If so, what is your prey now; the living, the dead, death itself?"

E continued to the fourth regiment. "Brightman. Always a big shot, always wanting to show off. You were lit brightly, now you are dark."

"Toadman, Drillman, Pharaohman, Ringman…"

E almost couldn't bear to continue as he realized that after Shadowman, he really never remembered much of the other bots. He could ramble off their names and their ID numbers, but that was all. It was as if he betrayed them by not remembering, and now they would be forgotten, living only as images and names.

He felt himself stuttering like he did back at HQ when he remembered how the others had been defeated by Zero. E started to head back towards the beginning of the tour, but now, certain memories came to the surface, how they died. He tried to shield his eyes from the ghosts, hoping not to recount the vile images of their destructions, but he couldn't help it, and recalled several of the gruesome tragedies.

{Pharaohman: Sliced through the chest by Zero, his systems slowly shutdown as his power left him.}

{Shadowman: He was holding Megaman down while Wily tortured Roll. When he got loose, Megaman blasted him at point blank range, right in the face.}

{Snakeman: While trying to slither away from battle, got crushed under a falling steel beam.}

{Topman: Struck down by Megaman when he arrived, were it not for his Top Spin power, he would have died on the spot, instead, he laid badly damaged on the ground. Left to die slowly.}

{Geminiman: He split in two, then Zero made him 4.}

{Crashman: Caught in the crossfire between Megaman and Drillman. Drillman charged forward, Megaman dodged, Crashman didn't.}

The next image haunted him the most. Before him was Quickman, doing his best to stay ahead of the vicious swordsman. Just after he decapitated the skeletal robot, Zero locked in on the speedy one.

{No! Get away from him! Run! Don't fight, RUN!}

Quickman was staying just a second ahead of Zero, who proved to be almost as fast of foot as the self-proclaimed 'fastest thing on two feet'. But while Quickman may have had pure speed, he wasn't as quick as the name declared. Zero jumped in front of him when he stopped to attack and came down on him with his sword. Before he could respond, the sword sliced his head in two, and half his torso was also spilt down the middle.

{NOOO!!!}

* * *

Katie stayed outside. She could barely hear what E had been saying to the holograms, but all she saw after he turned around was a weak robot stumbling back towards the door. She wanted so desperately to run out and help him, but she also feared what he would think if she interfered, and even more terrified of whatever had turned him into a shambling wreck.

She waited at the door.

* * *

E managed to find himself facing his old self again, the image seemed darker and more vile than before, more menacing. He watched, as Elecman brought his arms down, in an eerie slow motion, at one-hundredth the normal speed. As his arms came down, he was bathed in a glaring light, approaching him at a vicious pace, a fully charged shot from Megaman's plasma cannon. Before he could respond, whether to fire or dodge or block, the blast hit Elecman square in the chest, sending the robot flying back, crashing to the ground with a sickening *clank*.

As he stood there, E's composure returned, and the original appearance of Elecman also did.

E stood in front of his former self again, looking at the illusion, as if somehow, the answers he was looking for were locked away inside the formation of light and shadow.

"You see how I am plagued. This wasn't the first time either, but it was much, much worse. Why do I see these things, was the exchange worth it? Just days ago, I was laying motionless, my systems running nominally, now I have a new body, but nothing to do with it. Just minutes ago, I saw beauty, I saw art. What was once a static image of no consequence suddenly burst to life. And now I have been defeated by images that wouldn't have made you miss a beat."

"When you saw the others defeated, why did you not flinch? How could you continue on, whereas I was brought to my knees by only a memory? When Quickman was struck down, I could feel myself _screaming_ inside, hoping I could change the events that had already happened. But did you do anything, or did you just watch him die?"

"I don't know what I want anymore. Do I want to go back to being like you, cold, heartless, resilient to the slings of war, but unable to appreciate the loveliness of a flower. Should I stay like this, able to feel, able to see beyond what is simply presented, only to be brought down by emotions of fear and angst that conspire against me. Or maybe I would have been better left as a piece of scrap metal, unfeeling, uncaring, not having to face either you or I."

Try as he may, the hologram would yield no answers.

Above him, two synthesized tones were broadcast over the PA system, followed by a very calm female voice. "This is to announce that the museum will be closing in half an hour. We appreciate your patronage and hope that you return in the future to visit the past. And on the way out, why not visit our gift shop where we have a 10% off sale on Julius Caesar bath towels and Genghis Kahn coffee mugs. Thank you and have a nice day."

E was barely aware of the message.

"How dare you stare at me like that. Answer me!"

E pulled back and sent his fist flying straight for the head of his past life, only to have it pass through without the desired effect.

"You uncaring bastard, you never cared, and you couldn't care less about me. Fine. You deserve to be dead, after everything you did." E stepped back to get a better look at all of the fallen ones around him. "All of you deserve it!"

E turned towards the door and started to move to it. Behind him, he heard some people talking. He wondered if they heard his ranting and stopped to listen in.

One voice belonged to a male, definitely an older man by the rasp in his voice. "Oh, this is going to be exciting. To think that Dr. Wily's laboratory has actually been found. Not only will the information to be found be enormous, but if we could get a few of his Robot Masters in here, it would really bring in the crowds."

"Yes professor, but only if we could get one that was still intact, no one's going to want to see an old piece of rust." This one was definitely younger, and female.

"You miss the point my dear, just having a piece of real history from that era would be a goldmine. Having a piece of rust is far better than having nothing. People get bored with things that are fake, they don't like looking at holograms, they want reality. That's why people go to the mall or rock concerts instead of just staying at home and shopping online or listening to the radio."

"Still, having a complete robot would be better than an arm."

"Of course you're right. I'm hoping we could get Geminiman or Crystalman, their crystalline bodies would make a very magnificent display, provided they're in good condition. I only wish the Hunters weren't all over it, I can only imagine what those neo-Neanderthals would do."

"You're worried they won't proceed with caution and possibly destroy the archeological value?"

"Partially, but I'm sure Dr. Cain is involved, at least he has some experience in this sort of thing. But there'll probably be some security conscious bureaucrat who'll have them stripped down and gutted to ensure they are of no threat to society. I'm more worried that some paranoid barbarian is going to go into a panic and try to scrap the lot of them out of fear over Dr. Wily. Fear is very powerful, and very destructive, far more than any one person, or even an army."

"Professor, you're shaking. Come on, we'll head back to the office, and I'll calm you down." The woman giggled.

"Thank you my dear, I could use some relaxation, I've been all a buzz since hearing about it."

The two strangers faded away into the darkness. Somewhere a light appeared, a door frame and the two entered. When the door closed, E was alone again.

"You are wise, professor. The power of fear is truly insane. But your thirst for knowledge, your interest in… _them_, that is even worse."

E stood for a second, further contemplating how this world would react to the discovery of Dr. Wily's lab, the Robot Masters, or worse, what if they discovered him? Could he ever become a part of this world, without the dark aura of Dr. Wily floating over his head for the rest of his life. Would he be feared? Could he become that which could send this world to it's destruction, by simply existing?

"Zero. All I knew of you was a psychotic maniac. And yet you seemed to have found peace, but you live knowing that you were the instrument of Wily's revenge on this planet. I don't know how you did it, but I have to find out, before it's too late."

* * *

Katie saw E coming towards the door. The last thing she wanted was for E to catch her eavesdropping on him, so she made a quick break towards the far side of the room.

{Now, what do I do? I should go easy on him, he's had a rough time. No, if I get too nice he'll suspect something, I should just treat him normally, like I've been all day. But he could really use the support, maybe I'll be just a bit nicer.}

E emerged from the doors to the Wily exhibit.

"What the Hell were you doing?!"

E was startled as Katie came down on him.

Katie started to whisper and shout at the same time. "Why did you run off and leave me behind?! We came here together, and it's very impolite to leave a lady without at least having the decency to tell her you had to leave!"

E tried to get a word in edgewise, hoping to explain, or at least apologize.

"If we weren't in a museum, I'd really show you a thing or two! And to think, I was actually going to ask you to come with me to the Drew Carey Film Festival this weekend!"

"L-look I'm…"

"Shut up! The museum's closing, let's just leave!"

E was left speechless, but with no other options, he slowly followed Katie towards the exit. For the time being, the horror of Dr. Wily was put behind him as a new worry took it's place. In a sick way, he appreciated Katie's fury.

To be continued


	7. The Last Nightmare

**The Last Standing**

**A Megaman X fanfiction by Black Mantle**

This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Capcom and are used without permission. Cleo, Dash, Katie, Spinstar are © Black Mantle.

_**The Last Nightmare**_

It was a rather long day, but Katie and E finally returned to Hunter HQ. Outside was starting to get dark as the large lights in the cavernous ceilings were dimming. It wasn't much of a sunset, but it was about all they had down here.

"I had a pretty good time, until you ditched me at the museum."

"I'm sorry, but I had something to do."

Katie reluctantly continued to argue, not wanting to let on that she followed him and that she understood E's behavior. "Look, when you go out with a friend, it's really rude to just leave without telling them. So the next time we go somewhere, don't bugger off."

"Sorry."

"Don't say 'sorry', say 'you're right and I won't do something that stupid again'."

"O.K. I'm right and you won't do something that stupid again."

Katie was stunned that E had pulled her quote against her by not parroting it. She started to laugh. "You total bastard! Was that a joke that came from your lips?"

"Don't look at me, you started it."

"This is great, you always seemed a little cold and stale. It's about time you started to lighten up."

* * *

X noticed the slight change too. When he passed by the pair as they entered the building, he noticed the smile on E's face.

* * *

Katie led E who was still carrying most of her bags to her room. Inside, they laid the assortment of packages on the ground and E took a quick scan of the room. Though similar to the one X showed him earlier, it was heavily filled with Katie's various possessions. 

The walls bore several posters of movies and music bands; her love of the latter was quite obvious from the complex sound system she owned. A medium sized cabinet next to her bed held several pieces of audio equipment and a large library of media chips, neatly arranged in their original packaging. Cables ran out discretely along the floor towards the corners of the room where a series of speakers blended into the walls, standing from floor to ceiling.

Speaking of which, Katie's bed itself was pretty simple, just like the unit in his room, just big enough for one occupant at a time. However, the covers on it were clearly not regular issue. A bright pink, they looked really fluffy and had a white lace trim around them; though invisible under the sides of the capsule like bed frame, the edging was showing at the place where the quilt was folded down. The pillow finished the ensemble, covered in the same vibrant pink but without any trim on it.

Just to E's right, her bureau was pretty cluttered with various toiletries. Sure a bot wanted to look their best, but this seemed excessive. A variety of bottles were laid out in no particular order, obviously Katie took her appearance very seriously, but not so as her music collection. Soaps, paints, enamels, polish and exotic perfumes; E wondered how often she used this stuff, did she use it everyday, or just for special occasions. And how did she look when she was all gussied up, how did she smell?

"What do you think?"

"It's… wow."

Katie coyly asked. "Jealous?"

"Impressed would be the better term."

"Bet you wish you didn't have to go back to that drab cell block you call home."

"I'd hardly call it 'home'."

"Well, if you decide to join the Hunters, I'm sure you'll get used to it, after you add your own touches to it of course, just like mine. Oh, wait here."

Katie sorted through the bags and reached in to one of them.

"Here, take this."

"No, I couldn't."

"Take it."

E looked at what Katie handed to him "Andrew W. K.? The Bare Naked Ladies? No I couldn't take this."

"Please, it's going to be boring by yourself so I figured you needed something to keep company. Although you can play them on your internal data feed, I think they sound much better when played on a good stereo and listened to."

"Like the set-up you have here."

"Exactly."

"Look, I couldn't…"

"Take them. Consider them thanks for a good time."

"Even the museum."

"Yeah, even the museum."

Katie reached up and gave E a kiss on his cheek. "Now get out of here before people start talking."

E slowly walked out of the small apartment while Katie waved goodbye and closed the door.

{A kiss? With all these emotions, can we love too?}

* * *

E returned to the small enclosure that X had showed him earlier. It seemed bigger than Katie's due to it not being cluttered, but it seemed smaller than hers as it was totally empty. E finally got to take a look at the room; about the only things in it of notice were the bed, bureau and closet. He took the present that Katie gave him and laid it on the bureau, which seemed to be more of a desk with the legroom and the chair, only a large mirror made it a bureau. The drawers slid out easily, not that there was much point as they were all empty.

E then walked over to the closet, pressing a button on the side, the large sliding doors moved to allow him to see the contents. Much like the room and the desk, empty. Pressing the button again, the doors closed off the small corner returning the room to its original dimensions.

E walked over and sat down on the bed, it looked more like the capsule that Zero was in, except there was no glass over it. Not bothering with the quilts, E retracted his pylons and laid down on the surface. Even with his rear attachments in their compact form, he felt his torso was lifted too high and his head barely touched the pillow. He tried rolling on his side, but although he fit a bit better this way, he still wasn't very comfortable. Eventually he ended up on his stomach, wrapping his arms under the pillow, he laid his head down turned to the right.

{This is better.}

E's eyes opened and looked up, noticing the lights were left on. He noticed a set of controls at the head of the bed and looked for the light switch. Pressing a button, the room plunged into darkness, save for a small glow emanating from the control panel and a panel on the wall that E didn't notice. He laid there for several minutes, although he was tired, the events of the day left him in no mood to sleep. He reached up and turned the lights back on.

E just laid there until he saw the two albums that Katie had bought him.

{When did she get those, I was in the store with her? Maybe I should have been a little more selective when I just blurted out those two bands.}

He got up and walked over to the desk/bureau and picked up one of them. He opened up the case for the Andrew W. K. album and examined the data cartridge inside. Flipping it over in his fingers, E reached over to his left arm and a panel opened up, revealing several data access ports. He looked for one that would accept the data card and inserted it. An overlay appeared before his eyes showing the contents of the cartridge. Searching through the contents, he found a song with a rather good title "She is Beautiful". E hoped for a nice quiet love song, which started out with a guitar solo and within seconds had exploded into heavy metal apocalypse.

"Oh damn!"

E stopped the song and glanced through the other titles. It was blatantly obvious that none of these were going to be very quiet. He ejected the cartridge and placed it back in the container. Opening the other one, he hoped the "Ladies" would give him something more soothing. Placing it in the slot in his arm, he noticed a new menu appearing with a new list of titles. He started to play through them and although he found the BNL to be a rock band, several of their songs where much more calm, suitable for going to sleep while listening to.

Closing the panel on his arm, E started to select some of the songs for playback with a very low volume. He laid down again, and turned off the lights while listening to the music.

It would still be several minutes before he would even start to doze off, but at least the songs kept him from getting bored out of his mind in wait.

Eventually, sleep would come.

* * *

E had never really experienced true sleep. His old form had gone into power down during repairs or recharging, but that was not sleep. Elecman never felt tired, just weakened, E was tired.

* * *

His eyes opened. Strangely, the feeling of exhaustion was gone, but something was different. E looked around and tried to find the light switch that was positioned at the head of the bed, but it wasn't there, neither was the bed. He then noticed the room was already bathed in a dim light, it was just a matter of his eyes adjusting to the trace elements of light that were present.

E tried to get his bearings as to where he was; it was definitely not the room he went to sleep in. Scratching his head, he tried to figure out what was going on when he took a good look at his hand. In the dim light he could not see it clearly, but it was no longer white, it was dark. The large white armguard was also gone, replaced by a gold armband. This wasn't his hand, or more specifically, it was _his_ hand. He started a quick check of his body, round helmet, pointed mask, black chest plate; E was no more, he had woken up as Elecman.

Elecman slowly rose to his feet and searched the room. It was dark, and there was little else but a lot of dark. He walked around, searching for an invisible path to walk on. As he stumbled through the darkness, he would brush up against invisible objects, unable to discern them from the unholy shade. Then he hit something, hard. Almost tripping over it, Elecman managed to catch himself. He knelt down to identify the object. As he got closer, it started to take shape and color. Now only inches away, he could see it.

{Gravityman?}

Elecman jumped to his feet. Whether his eyes had adjusted, or the light had changed, he looked around and found himself back where it all started, back where it all ended. The room was now showing, but remained cloaked in gray, a very depressing overcast February gray. Even though Elecman could now see, he started to stumble around the room even worse than before as his eyes jumped back and forth between the scrapped remains of his former colleagues.

{Why? Why are you here? What am _I_ doing here?!}

"Why are you here?"

Elecman turned around, fast, only to see more destroyed remains.

"You dare return here?"

Once again, he spun around to see nothing but shadows.

"W-who's th-there?"

A sound behind him alerted Elecman to another presence and he slowly turned his head. Behind him, from the rubble was some slight movement.

"You killed us."

"C-c-c-c-cutman?"

"You did this to us."

"N-no! I didn't, it was Megaman!"

"It was you who let us die."

Elecman turned to see another of his deceased comrades speaking through whispers.

"No. I was defeated too."

"You stole our energy."

"You took our power for yourself"

"We died so you may live."

"You fed off of us."

"I didn't mean it, I didn't do it deliberately!"

Glancing around, Elecman saw the others moving, skulking towards him, pinning him in, getting closer, leaving him with less room of his own.

"What? Stay away!"

"We shall destroy you, and we shall fed off you, and we shall live."

"No! Leave me alone! ALONE!"

Elecman was trapped and lost amongst the scrap.

* * *

E jolted up, eyes wide open, his systems in overdrive. He brought his hand up to his brow to steady himself, but something was wrong, he was still in Elecman's body.

{What, am I still here?}

He found himself in the same place, but a different time, as alerted to him by the loud familiar cackle that echoed around him.

"Mwa-ha-ha-ha-hahahahahaa! The 'vorld' is mine!"

The only other noise was an incredible scream. Elecman looked down over the scrap pile he was on and saw a figure lashed to a table. Struggling against the steel bonds, the figure could only yell out incoherently.

"And now to finish the job!"

On the table, Elecman could see the figure continuing to struggle, continuing to fight. Suddenly, a large spike punctured through the table, punctured through right leg of the captive. Splinters of metal and plastic sprayed from the spike, torn from the victim by the studs in the spike's warped surface.

Elecman was consumed by the scream of pain.

He stood there, totally paralyzed in fear as the laughing, that god-awful cackle started to break through to him again. In response, another spike pierced the already loud echoes of torment. The figure's screams doubled as the left leg was ripped apart by the other evil prong. Elecman could do nothing; his body wouldn't let him. He could only stare as the figure continued to be tortured, as each successive needle drove through sooner than the one before. Two more through each leg, two through each arm, one just below the stomach, five more spread over the belly, one through each shoulder, then one more, one final spear, right through the core.

The screaming ended, but the laughing remained.

Elecman's paralysis seemed to pass and he rushed down to the table. Looking past the ruined remains of the robot on the table, he reached the head and saw the victim.

Roll, Megaman's sister, the one he came here to rescue, but he failed. Elecman stood over the ruins of the girl robot and felt sickly, his systems started to go berserk. Unable to think straight, lost in total anarchy, only one thought came through clearly. His head turned towards the front of the room, the source of the laughing.

"THAT WAS MY SISTER YOU GOD DAMNED BASTARD!!!!!"

The whole room lit up from the intense lights of a giant machine. Before Elecman stood an enormous robot, the bulk of which was made up of a huge metal skull with glaring fiery eyes.

As Elecman's eyes adjusted to the sudden illumination, the menace before him started its attack, firing off powerful blasts of energy. The small robot ran for cover, then returned fire. His lightning slammed directly into the large skull, but it seemed to have no effect other than pinpointing his position. 

He was fired on again, and had to jump to save his life. Standing up, he tried attacking one of the numerous lights, starting with the left eye. With a mighty crash of glass, the immense light was extinguished, reduced to a spark laden mess. There was still plenty of light remaining from the other eye and the dozen other floodlights shining in his face for a target to be made, and Elecman had to once again run. Only now, he would run towards the goal.

At close range, the variety of guns and cannons couldn't lock onto the distressed robot as he climbed up the detailed surface of the death machine. During the climb, Elecman would shoot out anything of consequence, a gun turret, an antenna, an air vent; anything that looked like it could be destroyed. He soon made it to the top, in a mad craze, he shot through the glass of the cockpit and jumped inside.

Inside the dark room at the far back was a shadowy figure.

It called to him in a think Eastern European accent. "My, vhat a great entrance. Tell me, vhy have you come all they vay up here."

Elecman screamed and ran towards the figure, but as he approached, the stranger took shape, a walking skeleton in a lab coat. He froze as the skull's mouth opened and fired at him in a blazing light, sending him flying out the shattered window, head over heels to the floor below, landing on his face.

* * *

E jolted up again, reaching for the light switch in a panic, this time he found it. The images continued to flash before him, unrelenting, his body was locked in position, kneeling on the bed, his eyes wide open. He was in total chaos, but something was breaking through, someone was calling out to a girl named "Enid". After regaining enough of his composure, he realized he had left the music running. Going through his internal systems, he found the control for the data stream and cut it off, ending the song in mid-chorus.

Half rolling off the bed, he sat down on it and looked over himself. He was gone, the body he now saw was E's, not Elecman's.

Satisfied that he was now awake, E leaned forward and rested his head in his hands. One other clue told him that he was awake, that this was no dream.

{I am so tired.}

To be continued


	8. The Last Slice

**The Last Standing**

**A Megaman X fanfiction by Black Mantle**

This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Capcom and are used without permission. Cleo, Dash, Katie, Spinstar are © Black Mantle.

_**The Last Slice**_

The door opened, shedding a stream of light into the darkened hallways. Lights were only half lit and a figure slowly stalked the darkness. Lurching through the dimly lit hallways, the stranger searched for signed of life, seeking anyone to confirm the he wasn't alone.

E heard some signs of movement as a few people were still awake and moving through the halls. Though he didn't see anybody around, he knew they were there. Eventually he made his way out of the residential wing of Hunter HQ and finally found someone. The working areas of the building were still abuzz with activity, though much less than in the daytime. As if to signify this, the lights weren't as bright as in the daytime, but much brighter than those around the living quarters.

E looked around, hoping to see someone he recognized from this morning, but everyone was different. It would be pretty obvious that an organization of authority would be operating 24 hours a day, and this was the night shift.

E walked around, looking for something to do, but also trying not to look out of place. He realized there was one location that he probably could go and went on his way.

* * *

E arrived at the cafeteria a few minutes later, glad that it was still open, but he figured even the night shift wanted a snack too. It seemed to be the only place in the building whose lights were on full.

He looked up at the lit menu above the counter offering a wide variety of synthesized meals for the reploid workers here, and a few dishes of real food were listed on the end in case any humans dropped by. Although a pretty varied cuisine was available, he also noticed that each one bore a price tag on the right.

*sigh*

E started to walk away when the reploid at the counter called to him.

"Hey there."

E turned; looking around there was no one else except a quartet sitting at a far table. "Who, me?"

"Yeah. It's 'E' right?"

A little stunned that the waitress knew of him, he walked over. "That's right, how do you…"

"X told us about you. Hey, let me tell you something, hon. There are two things you gotta know about the cafeteria. We know everything that goes on around here. And second, we know what to shut up about, so don't worry about it, we won't tell about, him." The waitress whispered out the last part.

E was a little calmer now, the female had a fairly forceful voice, but it was warm and caring too. He took a quick look down and saw the nametag, "Alice".

"So, do you want anything?"

"Well, I don't have any money on me."

"X told us he'd comp you if you wanted something."

"Oh, well, what's here then?" E had basically ignored the whole menu since he didn't recognize any of the items on the list.

"Well, I can make anything on the list, but you'll have to wait a while. It's much easier when you come in the daytime since we're cooking non-stop. If you want, I could heat up some leftovers, that'll take only a second."

"'Leftovers'? You mean what someone else didn't eat."

"Hey, it's not bad if it something good. I got just the thing, wait here."

E waited while Alice went in the back and brought out a plate. On it was a large, flat, triangular meal.

"What it that?"

"Pizza, this was the last slice. You just pick it up by the crust, fold it over a bit and bring it up to your mouth." Alice handed him the plate and a glass filled with a transparent blue liquid. "And here's something to drink."

"Is it good?"

"You better believe it. I'll tell you now, a good pizza is one that tastes better when eaten as leftovers."

"What would be a great pizza?"

"One that you don't have to heat up first." 

E walked over to a table and sat down, laying the plate and the glass on the clean surface.

With his left hand, he tried to imitate the action Alice had shown him earlier, picking up the slice from the crust and folding the pizza to give it some structure, but the front of the pizza dipped down a bit. A little uncertain what to do, he took the pointed end with his right hand guided it to his mouth.

This was the first real meal that E had. Earlier that afternoon, he recalled the parfait Katie had treated him too, but he never really remembered the taste of it, all he remembered was that it was cold, then they were interrupted by Katie's old friends.

The pizza was rather warm and overall, it seemed rather gooey in E's mouth at first, but as he chewed it, the various parts were mashed and blended together, but also stood out, as E could taste each component of the mess. It was a very strange experience; this was a new sense for him. As Elecman, he had eyes to see and ears to hear, but his mouth couldn't taste. The dough was rather tasteless but it added the texture to the mix, and it seemed to bear a strange power, not salt or sugar, but soft and pasty. The sauce was the most prominent taste, being the most liquid, it quickly spread through E's mouth and it was spicy, slightly burning in a chemical sting, but not to distract from the rest or to cause pain.

The cheese added a mild taste to the mix, but also hard to describe, it was neither salty, sour, sweet or bitter. It also gave the mush its solidity, sticking to everything, sticking to the inside of his mouth. Also in the mix were piece of some kind of simulated meat, a salami derivative he figured, pepperoni would have been spicier he figured. It's taste seemed to be overpowered by the sauce, and the only way he really noticed it was whenever he bit into a slice of it and the whole piece came out. The last ingredient must have been diced vegetables of some kind, having never tasted food before and with the strange colors E had no idea what they were supposed to be, but each time he bit into one, it felt like a drop of tasty water splashed in his mouth, washing away ever taste was there previously, be it the dough, sauce, cheese or meat.

E was slowly chewing his meal, trying out his new sense of taste to its fullest. He heard a swooshing sound when the main cafeteria door opened and Douglas walked in.

"Hi Alice."

"Hey Douglas, can I get you anything?"

"Just some coffee."

Alice chuckled. "Another all-nighter?"

"Yeah. Anything new going on here?"

Alice nudged her head towards the table where E sat and Douglas looked over.

"Oh, can't sleep either?"

E shrugged his head. "Rough night."

Alice brought Douglas his coffee and he sat down next to E. "What's wrong, can't sleep?"

"That's pretty obvious I would think."

"Just trying to get used to the body, or is it something else?"

"I'd have to say both."

"And you think that a midnight snack might appease it?"

"Probably not, but I needed something to do. What's keeping you up?"

"Oh, this project I've buried myself in. You know about the problems at the surface?"

"Severe pollution, totally inhospitable…"

"Right, anyway scientists from around the world are trying to develop way to fix it. The local universities and research institutes are working hard on the various problems and I'm helping them. Anyway, one of the more severe pollutants is rather resistant to most chemical treatments, except under certain special conditions."

"What conditions?"

"An intense electro-static field. Under normal atmospheric conditions the bugger can't be destroyed, but inside an intense electric field, it will break down when exposed to fluorine gas."

"How powerful does it have to be?" E picked up the glass of liquid and took a sip.

"Well, we need the field to exist between two flat electrodes roughly 400 square-centimeters in area spaced 7 centimeters apart. Here's the catch, we need a potential differential of over 60,000 Volts."

E almost dropped the glass on the table. "60kV?"

"And no sparks."

"Do you have any idea how totally boring that sounds." E took another bite of his pizza. "And after what I've been through, boring is an improvement, let's go."

* * *

Douglas and E were walking down the halls to the former's lab; the latter was still carrying the pizza and drink. "We've been using some new cesium ceramics in order to slow down the electric currents and prevent sparks between the electrodes, but they have an unfortunate side effect."

"Spot build ups."

"Right, certain areas get huge build ups of electricity throwing the potential way off, not only is it inefficient, but some of those spots peak beyond 200,000 volts and even the ceramics can't prevent discharges at that level."

"What have you been doing to try and draw off the excess charge?"

"We've been trying an electrical distribution matrix, sending the electricity to the weak areas and letting it spread out, then when one point gets too charged, we find other areas to send the charge to."

"How has that been going? Although I think I already know the answer."

"It was going fine at the start, it's often used to get stable fields over 1,000 Volts, but it can't keep up. After 8,000 Volts the charges start dancing around and the matrix can't keep up."

"Sounds pretty complicated, didn't you try something a little easier like a ground wire?"

"Grounding it won't work, that'll just drain all the electricity."

"Then use high resistant material. Start with something like tungsten and coat it with a heavy insulator, like a lead base salt. Then connect the two electrodes."

"Connect it where? Were talking about spots that move over the whole surface, how do you draw the spots towards the ground?"

E smirked. "You need to drain it."

Douglas was speechless; he had no idea what the 60-year-old rebuilt reploid had in mind.

* * *

E was looking over the prototype that Douglas had already built. "What you do is you place a tungsten rod, about 7 square-centimeters in cross-section around the outside of the unit, connecting the two electrodes. You make the contact a millimeter of lead chloride or lead oxide, and cover the tungsten in heavy insulation to prevent any other transfer. Now for the drain, you need to penetrate the ceramic with small thin threads of silver or gold wire, coming within a few microns of the electrode surface, culminating at the ground wire."

"Wait a minute, penetrate the ceramic, how do we get little thin pieces of silver into the ceramic. I'd be impossible to make the ceramic around the silver without disturbing it, and you can't drill such meticulous holes into the ceramic either. Even nanotechnology wouldn't be able to work with that ceramic."

"Tell me, have you heard of Magneto-Atomic Manufacturing?"

"'MAM'? Yeah, I've heard of it, use electromagnetic fields to ionize matter and reposition it precisely. That might work, but that works on one atom at a time, to build something this size will take months, maybe years, and that's if we _had_ the equipment."

E looked back at Douglas with an evil glare. "Give me enough silver, and I'll have it done tonight." He took a bite of the pizza.

* * *

For the first time since he awoke yesterday morning, E was actually enjoying himself, completely ignorant of how tired he was only an hour ago. The challenge that Douglas offered, as well as just showing up the "youngster", was a real kick. He started to whistle a strange tune, one he didn't know the name of, one that he recalled from deeply buried memories of half a century ago.

E passed his hands over the pieces of ceramic, guiding his electrical powers through the material. Invisible to the naked eye, small holes bore themselves into the brown glossy substance, but E could see them, he could feel them, pulverizing the material in the way, reducing it to its bare elements, depositing the residue in neat piles on the desk.

He then picked up the ceramic piece, inspecting it, the only noticeable change being the hole on the backside where it would connect to the ground wire. He laid the piece back down and reached for his drink, taking another sip from the sweet mixture and placed it back down.

"Ahh, that's good stuff."

E started to pick up pieces of silver wire and positioned one in the hole. One again, he started to work on it, breaking down the wire at the atomic level, guiding the atoms in a stream to the holes, filling them a little at a time. After another half an hour of work, it was done.

The meticulous worker picked up the plate again, and as if to complete a job done well, he blew on it to clean off any non-existent dirt.

"This is so boring. And I _love_ it!"

Doug walked over to see how E was making out. "How's it going, I've got the ground wire complete."

E showed him the plate, complete with the silver in place.

"Woah, you got it in there."

"Yep." E picked up the other plate and started the same precise work on it. Douglas had to look hard to see the slight changes in the surface as the rock like panel was being eaten away, right under E's hands.

"Incredible. This should take days for just one channel. You're doing it in seconds."

"Thanks, this is actually pretty fun."

"'Fun'? I know what you mean, I like building things too, that's why I work here."

E looked up momentarily. "Oh yeah. Tell me, do you like the working, or a finished job."

"I tell you, driving around in a machine of my own design is a kick, but it's the job of building that sucker that I really love."

"Yeah. I was at the museum this afternoon… yesterday afternoon, and I saw an exhibit by Picasso. Great art, really weird but it was really something. I wondered how he felt while he was painting it. I could see his vision, his ideas in the art, and I could feel the work and passion he had for it, but there was that little bit that I couldn't sense. I couldn't feel the actual satisfaction of doing the work itself. I had to know what it was like, I had to try. For me, this is art; this is something of beauty that I create. I know this won't end up in a museum, but I don't care, I just have to know the personal satisfaction."

Douglas was smiling and gave E a pat on the shoulder. "If this works, this thing may end up in a museum yet."

E thought about it for a second. {Look out Picasso.}

* * *

"30,000… 35,000… 40,000…" Douglas was reading off a series of numbers on the display as his anticipation grew. "55,000… 60,000… 62,000… 63,000…"

E stood there, monitoring his own instruments while Douglas continued to call out.

"64,500! And it's holding!"

E crossed his arms in satisfaction while Douglas was jumping for joy.

"Electrostatic variance is…"

E quietly muttered. "0.148703."

Douglas called out. "0.15!"

{His equipment needs an upgrade.}

"I can't believe it. We did it!" Douglas calmed down a bit. "I mean _you_ did it."

E turned to Douglas and shaked his hand. "No, _we_ did it."

Soon after, X entered and was surprised to see E here.

"Hey Douglas, how's it going? You trying to help out, E?"

"We got it. It's working. 64,500, we got it working! I'm telling you, this guy is a genius!"

E coyly smiled at the comment, half-confidence, half-embarrassment.

X looked over at the beaming reploid. "Looks, like you may have found a place for yourself. You want the job?"

"Maybe, but I've got a few conditions first."

"Like what?"

E started walking away with X. Before leaving, E reached over and grabbed the last bit of the pizza and stuffed it in his mouth. Though it had long since gone cold, he ate it anyway.

"That was a great pizza."

To be continued


	9. The Last Sight

**The Last Standing**

**A Megaman X fanfiction by Black Mantle**

This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Capcom and are used without permission. Cleo, Dash, Katie, Spinstar are © Black Mantle.

_**The Last Sight**_

Light broke into the darkness as the large door opened into the outside world. The roaring of an engine echoed through the large enclosure. When the gate had fully lifted, a lone jet cycle raced out of the garage, into the world, into whatever was left of it.

The ground was in tatters, totally vacant, large blast craters and scrap metal from the fallen space station where littered everywhere. The air also seemed damaged, it was stale, dead.

The jet cycle continued to speed over the empty highway, heading out to face its destiny.

* * *

E stopped at the outskirts of the scrap yard. Realizing the bike could never make it through the litter, he left it just inside the gate and started to march in. He knew exactly what he was looking for and he knew exactly where it was. He trolled more than 500 meters into the debris before finding the large steel door.

The door had a new lock on it, placed there courtesy of the Maverick Hunters. With his hand, E typed in a combination and the lock opened, followed by the door.

* * *

E walked into the large room, and reached towards a glowing panel near the doorframe. Around the chamber, floodlights illuminated the ancient space with a contemporary glow. Looking around, the room was empty, not one piece of scrap was to be found. Instead, various small beacons were placed on the floor, each one marking the location where a destroyed Robot Master had laid for the last 6 decades.

As he walked into the lab, E's vision blurred as images started to appear before him. He had spent so much time here, though not the main lab, Wily's hidden fortress wasn't overly large. As he continued forth, more images overlaid the previous ones. At first, only brief pictures of the first army appeared, including Elecman, then more images came as Wily's army got bigger. More images of the originals along with newcomers filled the room, passing through each other, ignorant of all the other copies of themselves.

Then, one figure emerged, one that certainly didn't belong with the others. The dark figure started to make its way though the other images, but it seemed aware of the others, it started to interact with the others. Slowly the other images started to fade out as the stranger continued its path through the room. E kept walking.

As time passed at a snail's pace, the other images seemed to become aware of the stranger, they were becoming frantic, obsessed with the intruder. More and more, they were running, screaming things that were inaudible to the real world and then they disappeared.

As the crowding thinned out, E could start to see the image that drew so much attention to itself, a brazen individual, not demonstrating fear or concern, just simple berserk rage. His armor was an unholy dark shade and he carried a blazing light whose sole purpose was death. Trailing him was his mark, a flash of yellow that flowed like air, swinging around like a whip, mimicking the light of destruction he so boldly flaunted in front of him.

E continued his march, with his eyes locked totally on the imaginary reaper, he knew exactly where he was going, and he knew exactly what was waiting for him. Soon, the images were all but gone, except for two, both of which leapt and danced about the room like it was their private ballet. E took his eyes off them and he took his last few steps.

His left foot came down, then his right, then his left approached the next fall. As it pressed into the floor, E's weight shifted and his foot turned. From behind, another foot appeared, hitting the ground at the same place, turning around at the same place, catching up to E, and matching his motion perfectly. As E turned, another foot appeared, positioning itself with his right foot, following it as it spun around the left, taking a position just past the left, planting itself on the floor and continuing the turn.

The slow motion turn continued and E's whole body was being overlaid by a ghostly image. As he completed the rotation, he looked up, and the ghost matched. Above them stood the incarnation of death, bringing its light upon the pair. He stood there, staring into the face of the grim reaper himself as the light came down upon him, piercing him between his eyes as it completed a mighty arc. The other ghost was sent flying back, struck down by the light and then there was naught.

E was now alone in the room, all the images had vanished. He looked behind him to see one of the beacons gleefully blinking behind him, a reminder that he didn't need.

* * *

He continued forward into the crypt, now in the main lab, where it all came crashing down. E slowly moved about the lab, it too had been gutted, spotted with more of the blinking beacons, but much of the damage was still here.

E entered, but the room remained empty, no images flashed before his eyes, no dark stranger. But he heard it, it was quiet at first, but with each step the noise grew. Passing the beacons, little representatives of tombstones, he could hear the cries of war, the firing of weapons, the explosions, the screaming. Soon, the memories reached their peak when E reached a specific beacon. He turned away from it, apparently in no particular direction, but important to him.

Simply standing there, the veteran robot braced himself, readying for the onslaught. He raised his arms to the sky, then a strange but familiar sound was heard in front of him, a sharp buzzing noise. He just waited for a few seconds, listening to the irritating sound, then it started. E lowered his arms, bringing them down in a forceful but very slow thrust. As his arms came down, the noise grew louder, more piercing, more annoying, more fearsome.

E arms were at the desired height, perfect for launching an attack, and the static was encompassing him, seemingly coming from a point just in front of him. He stopped again, taking in the odd mélange of frequencies that were preparing their own offensive, and he stretched his hands.

The explosion was deafening, then all was silent. He was alone, again.

* * *

Approaching the table at the center of the lab, E looked down at the two beacons sitting on it. Sitting on the edge, he swung himself over and laid in the gap between them. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, he just waited.

For several minutes, he did nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing, but he could feel something. Somewhere inside him, it was coming, his body told him that. It came.

E yelled as he felt sharp pains tearing through his right shin, the pain was excruciating, mind numbing, vile. It would not subside, but as E started to get used to the tearing punishment, his left leg was ravaged as well. The pain racked his whole body, sending shockwaves to every cubic millimeter of his being.

He continued to suffer the punishment as it intensified, destroying more of his legs before moving to his arms, his shoulders, his stomach. His whole body was on fire, but he didn't budge, he let the pain continue, pushing him to the limits, driving him to the brink of insanity. Then it hit him, one last strike, right through the center of his being. 

"ROLL!!!"

His pain ended and he laid there.

* * *

He sat up, though the room was still the same, it seemed totally different. It was stale, empty, quiet. The lab was now dead.

"Why didn't I do anything? Why did I let you die?" E started to choke, and a tear ran down him eye. "Why didn't I stop him?!"

He brought his legs up and wrapped his arms around them, then rested his head on his knees. Clenched in his secure position, his defense against his last tormentor, E started to cry. He wanted nothing to do with the reality of his existence, but reality would come knocking.

*clang*

"Oops… oh shoot."

E looked over at the door leading back to the other lab. "Who's there?"

From behind a large computer bank, Katie walked into the open.

"What are you doing here?!"

"I came to see you."

"Leave me alone!"

"No. Going off by yourself isn't going to help you."

"What would you know?!"

Katie tried to approach him, but E shrugged her off.

"Will you please talk to me?"

"There's nothing for me to talk about!"

"E, Elecman, or whatever your name is, you have friends that care about you."

"All my friends died 60 years ago!"

"That's a load of garbage, these were not your friends, they were mindless machines reprogrammed to do the bidding of a madman. You should know that, you were once one of them."

"My, you certainly are a little busy body."

"I just feel bad for you. You've been sulking ever since you woke up. Your memories of them have been screwing you up, but no matter what you remember, they are gone! They're no more, Wily's gone, this Roll character is gone! They weren't your friends."

"Roll wasn't my friend."

Katie stopped and wondered what E meant.

E choked a little before answering. "Roll… she was my… sister."

* * *

Back outside, Katie and E were heading back to the entrance, neither having said anything since the word "sister" was uttered. It was a slow walk; E really didn't feel the need to go anywhere and would probably have been content remaining in the lab.

E stopped walking, Katie took a few more steps before she realized she was leaving him behind and stopped too.

"I did nothing."

Katie listened carefully to what E said. She didn't have the whole story of what happened 60 years ago, but X did tell her the gist of it.

"When Wily activated Zero, he went on a tirade, destroying several of the other robots, 17 if I remember correctly. One of them was a friend, Quickman. When he was struck down, I didn't do anything. Sure, I joined in to help take Zero down, not that I did that much, it was really Gutsman and Stoneman who outmuscled him, and were destroyed in the process."

E stopped for a second.

"I know you're right, he really wasn't a 'friend', that's just how I want to remember him, but still. When he was killed, I didn't feel bad, I didn't feel enraged, I didn't even feel sad. I just went on as Wily proceeded with his plan to destroy Megaman."

"The death of my friend. In a way, I could live with that. Zero was so much more powerful than us, I tried my best to defeat him, but it just wasn't enough. It was what followed. After Zero was down, Megaman came to rescue his sister, Roll. He failed, we caught him, and Wily didn't want him terminated yet. Instead, he wanted to gloat. And right before Megaman's eyes, and right before my eyes, he destroyed her. He didn't just terminate her outright; he did it slowly, tearing apart her body, before landing the finishing blow."

"When Roll died, and I don't care what you want to call it, she died, Megaman went berserk. And what hurts me the most, is that I didn't. Instead of standing up to Wily, I actually stood down my brother, and tried to help that, that… _murderer_." E almost broke down in tears again.

Katie walked over to him. "It wasn't you fault. Wily reprogrammed you."

"Don't you see, it doesn't matter. He may have reprogrammed me, but I now have to live with what happened."

"E… Elecman. I have no idea what you're going through. There isn't a person on this planet, human or reploid who has even the vaguest idea what you're going through. But look around you, you've seen the destruction that the recent Maverick wars have caused, everyone has lost so much. Everyone knows what it's like to lose something dear to them, it may have been a friend, a family member, a loved one, or perhaps just losing the home they remembered. But everyone wishes that they had lived their lives differently, as if they could change the way things are now by going back to then. 'What would I have done then if I know what I know now?' We are all like that, but we can't live like that. If you live in the past, then you can't live in the present."

E looked at her.

"Now come on, do you really want to stay here, or are you coming home?"

E didn't feel much better than before, but he did realize something. He could face Quickman, he could face himself, but he couldn't face Roll, at least not yet. One day he would exorcize that demon, but not now.

Begrudgingly, he picked himself up, and continued walking.

* * *

"Uh oh."

"What is it?"

E looked around a bit nervously. "You parked in the same place as I did right?"

"Yeah."

"I was afraid of that."

The two of them looked around, they were nearing the outside and in the area where they parked, but there was no sign of the bikes, at least not intact. They walked over to find the two jet bikes left in one of the scrap piles, junked.

"You don't suppose this is some teenage prank, do you?"

E didn't believe so, and even less when they heard the junk move. The two moved away from the pile and readied themselves, E's hands charged with energy and Katie's right arm transformed into a small cannon. They backed away from the garbage, waiting for whatever was coming, and it came fast.

Shooting out from the trash, it came so fast that it looked like a giant, silver bullet. The two Hunters only got a shot or two off before having to leap away from the charging object that burrowed into the ground just behind them.

"What was that thing?"

"Looked like a robotic slug."

"Pretty damn fast for a slug I must say, big too."

E and Katie searched for their target. To their left at mid-distance was a moving cloud of dust. Underneath, the robotic slug was boring through the ground, visible by the displaced earth and junk left behind. They tried firing a few shots at the motion, but were unable to score hits on it before it buried itself in another pile.

The two waited, listening out for the telltale digging sound. It jumped out again, boring through the ground. It charged towards E who started throwing lightning bolts at the ground in front of him. The slug jumped out at him, forcing E to the ground. Drilling back in, the Maverick made another pass, this time coming for the female.

Katie stood her ground, firing her cannon at the invader, but drawing no success in slowing it down.

"Get out of the way!"

"Trust me, I know what I'm doing!"

The slug charged her and jumped out of the soil, but Katie was waiting. Leaping to one side, she raised her large tail into the air and sprayed a thick noxious fog at the creature as it left the protection of mother Earth. Caught in the vile mist, the slug emitted a sharp electronic squeal as the acid ate through the steel shell. In too much pain to continue its normal function, the slug bounced and rolled on the ground instead of diving into it again and came to a halt, screeching in agony while the corrosive solution did its work. Eventually, all motion stopped, and all that was left was a charred mess.

"Told you I knew what I was doing."

"Very impressive."

"Yeah, I'm just a mean, green mama!"

E smirked.

"What?"

"You do realize that description also fits a giant, man-eating, alien plant named 'Audrey'."

"A what? What on Earth are…?"

"Hold it." E looked back to the downed slug, which was twitching slightly.

"Still functional?" 

Katie leveled her arm cannon, ready to finish the job when E grabbed her. "Get down!"

The slug exploded, sending bits and pieces everywhere, but one large fragment was thrown sky high.

E got up and helped Katie to her feet. "Damn, that thing was rigged to explode."

Katie looked up. "Not quite, look."

Above them, another Maverick had appeared. "You blasted Hunters, you walk around like you own the place. Well, I'll teach you two a lesson for trespassing."

"Who is this guy?"

"Morph Moth, that maggot we were fighting was his larval form."

"Die!" Morph fired his laser weapon at the two Hunters who jumped away and started counter fire.

A firefight ensued between the trio with numerous shots fired from both sides, but no hits being scored. Morph Moth flew around erratically to dodge the incoming shots while E and Katie kept running in circles, looking for cover. When the lasers didn't seem to work, Morph started to sprinkle a strange powder on the two.

"Watch it, I read about this, that stuff really stings!"

E skipped away as he watched out for the large clouds of pollen surrounding him, shooting through them, trying to get a hit in while Morph bothered with the slow attack. With their movements restricted by the pollen fog, Morph dive-bombed the pair, firing his laser as he approached.

"This guy's gone kamikaze on us."

E and Katie continued to fire, being left little choice. Morph continued to circle and then made a break for the one who dared to strike him down before. Giving her a taste of her own medicine, Morph charged at her, cutting through the poisonous clouds he laid, firing on his approach. Katie tried blasting him to stop the attempt, but Morph had his own idea. Before reaching her, he took a quick turn and dropped another load of the red powder, right into the cornered Hunter.

Katie's hide was designed to resist chemical attacks since it was her forte, but the pollen still got in her eyes and blinded her as Morph made a break for it. Flying at ground level, Morph was about 10 meters away when he turned and aimed his laser at the defenseless skunk.

"Katie! Look out!"

Too late, Morph fired, slamming into Katie and sending her to the ground, leaving a huge hole where her abdomen used to be.

E screamed, and let loose a massive discharge of electricity in Morph's direction. The Maverick flew up, and although he avoided getting permanently zapped, the insect still received a major blow to his right wing, almost tearing it off. As the Maverick barely flew away, E ran over to check on Katie.

She had taken heavy damage, but even worse, E could see her power systems surging as her fusion generator was going critical. Rather inharmoniously, he ripped out the faulty system and threw it as far as he could before it exploded.

The immediate danger was over, but Katie's injuries were still severe, and on reserve power, she would barely be able to move let alone fight, not even considering that one of her legs was barely hanging onto her body and the other one was totally detached.

"Katie, Katie?!"

Katie managed to look up at his. "I don't feel so good, so weak."

He did a quick scan of the area, searching for electromagnetic radiation that he was so well designed for.

"I have to get you out of here. That blasted moth is still nearby."

E picked up the helpless Hunter and started to search for some cover. Taking a long route, E had hoped he could circle around Morph Moth to reach Wily's Lab, at least there he would find some equipment to help Katie, but no such luck. Morph knew about the location, and although he couldn't get in, neither would E.

He eventually spotted a rusted transport truck and went over to the side door. Opening it, he found the truck's box had been filled with junk, but there was enough room to move about. Moving to one end of the long carrier, E made a space for Katie to lie down.

"Here, you had better rest, your reserve cells don't have much power, they were only designed to keep you online in case main power was lost, but not to power your whole body." E quickly examined her power level. "Here, this should help, and I hope you don't think I'm getting fresh."

E reached his hand into the hole, and took hold of the main power line that was previously connected to the fusion cell. With little effort, he shunted a flow of energy through the pipeline into Katie's systems.

"Oh! That's nice. Do you do that to all the girls?"

"Very funny. There, your reserve cells have a full charge. That should easily keep you up for a few hours."

Katie noticed how astute E was in mentioning how long the charge would last. "Wait a minute, you're not leaving me here."

"I have to, I have to call for help. Plus… I think Morph is calling the cavalry. I can feel his energy signature, and at least two more are near him."

E got up and walked out the door, closing it as best the door could on its rusted guides.

Katie whispered in the dark. "Good luck."

* * *

"I won't let you die. I _won't_ let it happen again."

To be continued


	10. The Last Doubt

**The Last Standing**

**A Megaman X fanfiction by Black Mantle**

This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Capcom and are used without permission. Cleo, Dash, Katie, Spinstar are © Black Mantle.

_**The Last Doubt**_

"It's about time you showed up."

Three more Mavericks appeared to help Morph Moth track down his prey; Wire Sponge, Spiked Rosered and Dark Necrobat.

Dark was rather peeved at being called to this scrap pile. "What is it you filthy, flabbergasted, fluttering fool?"

"Shut up, a couple of Hunters are here."

Rose crossed his arms. "Don't tell me a couple of hunters got the better of you."

"Just help me get them. One's a female skunk, I got her good, it's just a matter of tracking her down. The other's the hard case; tough guy, throws lightning bolts like a pro, almost got me."

Dark scratched his chin. "Lightning bolts. Hmmm, sounds interesting."

Rose lashed out with his vine whip. "Who cares, let's scrap 'em."

Morph checked his wing again, satisfied it was sufficiently repaired, he gave the call to arms.

* * *

"X? Alia? Hello? Hunter HQ can you read me?" E was getting frustrated; the signal just wasn't getting through. He needed to call home, to get help before…

E switched off his communicator and went searching for a new spot. Looking around, felling the radiation in the air, searching for a clear area.

*chink*

E looked just in time to see an oncoming projectile and moved out of the way. A sharp spearhead shot past him, carrying a thick wire behind it crashed into the scrap behind E. A quick pull and the harpoon returned from where it came. 

E looked over at who tried to snare him. "Who are you?!"

"Your destruction!"

{Why don't these evil maniacs just give a straight answer instead of acting like a comedian?}

Wire Sponge fired another line at E, who dodged out of the way and returned fire, scoring a direct hit on the Maverick.

"You've got power. You can dish it out, but can you take it?!"

Wire pulled in his loose cable and started to change color. E fired again, only this time his bolt reflected off. Sponge yelled and started firing his own lightning bolts into the air, turning around, they rained down on E's location.

He didn't flinch; E just stood there and let one of the bolts hit him. "Hmmm. Delicious. You should know better than to fire lightning bolts at someone who dresses like this."

Wire noticed his attack backfired and tried throwing his strike chain again.

E dodged, and grabbed the chain. "You idiot, not only should you not attack me with a lightning-based attack, but you should avoid metals too."

E's hand charged with energy and sent a massive surge through the cable, straight into Wire Sponge. His body locked up as the electrical energy pulsated through his circuits. His mind was drowning in incoherent data streaming from his senses, screaming for release. They finally gave out.

* * *

Around the junkyard, the other three Mavericks saw the explosion.

* * *

Back at the battlefield, Wire Sponge's spear hooked around a jutting steel beam high atop one of the piles. Down the cable, E had tied the end to one of his pylons. He tried his communicator again.

"Hello? Hunter HQ? Alia? Do you read me? This is E, Over."

The speaker crackled, but a voice barely broke the static. "E, this is Alia. What's happening? Over."

"We got trouble. Several Mavericks are at my position, I've taken one down but there are two more. Katie's down, and it's serious. We need backup now! X knows where we are, just have him look for our bikes, we'll be near there."

E looked up when he felt another EMF disturbance. "Sorry, looks like I've got some company. Gotta go!"

E cut the signal and untied the cable. {One down, two to go.}

* * *

Back at HQ, Alia was talking into the com. "E? Hello? E, do you read me? Over. E?!"

She pushed a few buttons on the keyboard. "X! Come in, X!"

* * *

Morph Moth swooped in to see the result of the previous battle, though expecting to see Hunter puree, the only one standing looked at him with an evil glint in his eyes.

E's eyes fiercely locked on the incomer. "You!"

The flying menace looked around at the wreckage to identify who bought it. "You managed to defeat Wire Sponge. Not the most powerful Maverick, but I suppose it's a decent feat."

E looked up, yelling to the fiend at the top of his audio output system. "Come down here and I'll do the same to you!"

"Hmph! Why don't you come up here and say that." 

Morph laughed at his grounded opponent, then lashed out with a laser beam. E jumped back to barely avoid the shot. Pointing his finger upwards, he returned fire and sent a lightning strike at the metamorphing creature. With a few quick beats of his wings, Morph skillfully dodged the electric attack. Morph fired a few more laser beams and dodged a few more lightning bolts, then started on another attack run.

E saw the charging moth and dived to one side, then ran after him. The Maverick noticed the tail and decided to have some fun. Flying around the junk yard, he wanted to see how far the enraged reploid would go to follow him, and led E around the piles of scrap metal. E wouldn't let up and continued to give chase, stumbling over wrecked cars and trashed appliances, he didn't let the flyer get even a hair's breath further away from him.

"Impressive." Morph decided to end the chase by flying up one of the scrap heaps.

Engulfed in hatred, E tried to follow, and scampered as quickly up the pile as his legs and the shaky ground would allow. As Morph passed the top of the hill, he continued upward into the sky, but E wouldn't stop either. As he neared the top, the pylons on his back started to hum and crackle, and E launched himself off the top.

Above, Morph turned back to locate the predator, but he saw nothing.

"Where did you go?"

Morph continued to look around the ground, but saw nothing. As he continued to search, he failed to notice the odd shape hovering several meters above him. E looked down upon the confused insect, his eyes burning with rage. When he was directly over top, he released the magnetic field that held him up.

Morph only heard an oil-chilling scream when he looked up and saw E crashing into him.

"How did you?"

"Time to die, freak!"

The two struggled as Morph started to fly erratically, swooping high and low, between the piles and through the air, unable to control himself with the added weight trying to do him in. The strange ballet in the sky continued, graced with daring loop-de-loops and fumbled with crashes into the tops of piles, knocking wreckage over the ground. 

Morph was caught in a headlock, and E was beating him with his free hand. Reaching behind, E then tried to tear off one of Morph's wings.

"Wait, stop, you'll kill us both!"

"I've died once before! Have you?!"

E continued to pull at the wing, and Morph started a sharp dive to the ground. Neither seemed to notice as E was screaming in rage and Morph screamed in pain. The two tumbled, heading for the ground at breakneck speed. For a second, they looked up just long enough to realize the suicidal plummet.

E retracted his pylons, then let go, crashing into the ground in a stuntman's roll, knocking away fragments of lost machinery and sliding to a relatively safe stop. Morph pulled up as hard as he could with his fragile and damaged wings, trying to avoid the disastrous crash into the ground. He looked behind to see that E had come out with relatively little damage, but he should have kept his eyes to the air. He turned just in time to see the wreckage of a building in front of him, and the large steel girder sticking out that he impaled himself on.

The scream could be heard all over the junkyard. E looked up to see what was left of Morph Moth. Back on to him, the steel beam sticking out of his back, he looked like a butterfly in someone's collection. He admired the work, and quoted a poem of his own script.

_See the pretty butterfly,  
its wings so colorful,  
like a rainbow brought to life,  
fluttering in the wind above my head._

"What collector's going to want you?"

* * *

Walking away, looking for the last Maverick, E didn't realize that someone was watching the fight.

* * *

E leapt just in time to dodge the giant spiked ball hurtling towards him, only to fall face first on the scrap yard floor.

"Quick and alert, but your landings need work."

E rolled out of the way as Rosered lashed at him with his vine. Getting to his feet, E fired off a few shots of his own, but Rose ducked behind the scrap pile. The irate reploid ran over to strike the foolish plant down, but he was nowhere to be found, instead he got the drop on E and struck him from behind.

"You have to be careful when handling roses. We have thorns!"

Rose lashed again, and E just barely managed to avoid, returning counter fire, a direct hit.

"I hope you've got more than that."

E was stunned; his lightning had little effect on the Maverick.

"My structure acts like a natural insulator, your pathetic powers can't even phase me."

Red tossed out another spike ball, E once again dived out of the way, leaving himself wide open as he fell to the ground. Instinctively he rolled over and fired another flash, hoping to get lucky, he ended up being unlucky.

"Where the Hell?"

E scrambled to his feet, looking around for the mutant flower. He quickly turned around several times, expecting another ambush, but no one was there. 

{Where is he? I can't detect him at all. That means there's at least one more running around.}

As he scampered around in circles, Rose was sneaking up the side of a large heap, waiting for E to turn his back, then unleashed another sphere of thorns. E just barely saw it before it hit him, sending him to the ground. He looked up to see Rose disappear into the ground in a mass of weeds.

He laid there for a second, wondering what to do next, listening, waiting for some sign or queue to strike. He was being overtaken by panic, never before had E felt trapped like this. Never before, even when he faced defeat at the hands of Megaman, he simply fought on, never did he cower, never did he defend, never did he hold back. These emotions were confounding him, his fear had him locked there, helpless, as if it was a part of him that was trying to make him lose.

{He'll hurt you.}

{You can't touch him.}

"No, I have to fight him."

{Fight? You can't fight, you've forgotten how.}

"No."

{Can you see him?}

{How can you fight such a creature?}

{Your bolts do nothing.}

"I will fight him."

{Then die.}

"Quiet!"

{You can't win.}

{You're a failure.}

{You couldn't even defeat Megaman, how will you defeat a robot from the future.}

{Did you really think you could save her?}

The last comment to cross E's mind shattered him, and in a fit of rage, screamed. "SHUT UP!!!"

The fear did not subside, but it changed, instead of a hundred whispers, it came through as one loud voice: "Move!"

E heard it loud and clear, and quickly rolled to one side as Rose just missed him with his vine whip. E jumped to his feet and started firing lightning bolts at Spiked, hitting him over and over.

"It'll take more than a hundred of your sparks to take me down!"

"I only need one more."

E looked down, then fired his most powerful bolt yet, at the ground. Beneath the rose's feet was a large scraped robot, the immense electric attack brought it to life and sent its systems into overload, exploding and catapulting Rosered through the air. E reached down to his feet and ripped off the hood of a wrecked car, then ran with it toward the projectile. Rose landed on his back with a hard thump, and opened his eyes just in time to see E bringing the hood down on top of him, not flat, but rather the curved back edge straight for his head.

* * *

Katie sat there, waiting, trying to preserve as much energy as she could. Even though she had a healthy charge, she had no idea how long she would be here, alone. Then she heard someone enter.

"E?" She gasped.

"Well, well, if this isn't a pretty sight. A lone hunter, damaged, scared, waiting for her knight in shining armor I suppose." 

The menacing figure emerged from the shadows, wings spread out, reaching into the darkness, masking where the shadows end and the real threat began. Katie just shivered in abject terror as the night crawler stalked her.

"It would appear that you are having a near-death experience, my dear. Your main power systems are lost and you're running on your reserve cells." Dark continued to move towards her. "I have feasted on many, and I find the last few drops of energy are always the sweetest."

Katie didn't want a review of her situation, nor did she want a preview of her fate.

"It is most satisfying watching you quiver like that, it really gets the 'juices' flowing through your circuits and makes this all the more exquisite."

She could see Dark's fangs gleaming as he approached, and started to shake her head in a desperate plead for her life.

"Come now little one. You will not feel much pain. I have been told that many feel such incredible exhilaration when their last ounces of energy are sapped from them. Of course, it's very short-lived, so settle down, and enjoy it."

Katie was paralyzed in horror as the demonic bat approached. Each step he took seemed to take an eternity, as his form drew closer.

*CRASH* "YEEARRGHHH!"

Katie snapped out of her stupor to see Dark lurching over with a long piece of rebar rammed through his gut. She looked behind him to see the source of the assault. From the shadows, a menacing figure slowly crept out.

"E!"

"You dare attack me!" Dark stood to face his opponent while regaining his composure. He then looked down to assess the damage. "Expertly played, my thunder-motifed opponent. You targeted my temporal flux co-processor, and disabled my Dark Hold."

The giant bat chuckled. "But it is of no consequence, I have more than enough power to destroy you." His left arm transformed into a cannon and fired upon E, who swiftly dodged to one side.

"Correction, you have more than enough power to destroy _you_!"

The pylons on E's back hummed with energy and lightning bolts lashed out between them and the rebar sticking out of Dark's mid-section, drawing away his power. Dark was about to fire again, to punish E for his insolence, but the latter ran up and grabbed him by the arms and pointed the canon straight up, blasting the ceiling.

"You shall pay for this! I shall make you feel pain like none the world has ever seen!"

"'Pain'? You don't know the meaning of the word! I have lived pain itself! I bore witness to some of the most atrocious acts the world has ever seen, past, present or future! I laid helpless as my friends slowly expired! I saw with my own eyes, my sister being tortured and mutilated before she was finally terminated in an act of insanity! Ever since my awakening, I have been tormented by nightmares that are far more vicious and corrupting than any virus! And amidst all of the chaos and suffering I have been plunged into, I actually found a small bit of happiness… AND I WON'T LET YOU TAKE HER FROM ME!!!"

E broke the hold, then started to attack Dark with a series of enraged punches and strikes, beating down the Maverick with untold fury. He then grabbed the metal rod and started to yank it in every direction, pulling the stalker apart from the inside before finally ripping it out. Dark Necrobat was left stumbling and depleted while E's rage encompassed him in a display of dancing sparks.

"May you rest in pieces… the way _I_ did!"

E raised his arms, and brought them down, launching his electric fury on the vampire, slamming him through the wall and into the scrap where his circuits overloaded. Dark Necrobat's fate was spelt out in a fraction of a second.

Back inside the trailer, E was recovering from his berserker state, and sat down next to the crying Katie. He picked up what was left of her and held her to him. Small sparks jumped back and forth between the two as E recharged her again.

"I was so scared, I didn't know where you were, and then he came in and…"

"Shhh. Just rest, no one will hurt you now."

Katie stifled back the tears as she wrapped her arms around E for security.

* * *

20 minutes later, X and a team of Hunters arrived to access the damage. He found E and the badly mangled Katie sleeping in each other arms.

"Wake up sleepy heads."

E snapped back into reality.

"So, did anything happen before we got here?"

E looked towards X. "From what I have gathered so far, nothing out of the ordinary."

"How is she?"

"Severely damaged, but otherwise alright."

"And what about you, are you O.K?"

E thought for a moment. "I will never be O.K. But I am feeling much better now."

To be continued


	11. The Last Word

**The Last Standing**

**A Megaman X fanfiction by Black Mantle**

This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Capcom and are used without permission. Cleo, Dash, Katie, Spinstar are © Black Mantle.

_**The Last Word**_

The next day, Katie was back on her feet, a new set of feet. She was parading around showing off her new body, a new black frame with blue, white and silver armor, polished to a bright gloss. As she danced over everything in sight, she received numerous catcalls and a couple of marriage proposals, but she didn't care.

Eventually X put a stop to the parade.

"Where did you get the new body?"

"E built it, isn't it great."

X looked her over, it was really impressive. {E definitely does good work.}

"I even feel stronger." Katie demonstrated by comparing her fist with a nearby wall, the wall didn't put up much of a fight.

"Whoops."

X stood there, admiring the hole. "Good, maybe now you won't be spending all your free time out for repairs. Too bad we'll be spending an equal amount of money on renovations. By the way, where is E?"

"He had to go somewhere, I'll be meeting up with him shortly."

* * *

E was back at the museum, looking again upon the holographic images of his former comrades.

"Well, guys, this will be it. I'm never going to forget you, but I have to put you all behind me."

The ghosts didn't respond.

"I know, even if you were functional, it would be something that you couldn't comprehend. There was a time when we were all together, but none of us were really alive, we couldn't feel anything, we didn't understand the world around us, we didn't understand ourselves. There really was no point for us to be remembered as anything more than names in a history book, we were just machines, carrying out a program. We simply existed."

E paused for a second.

"Well, I'm not like that anymore. I am now so much more than just a machine, following the complex pattern of some program. I have a life now, and the whole point of being alive, is to live. Not like before."

"I have dreams of us, back in the 'old' days. Humans call it 'nostalgia', to remember the past in a good light and to long for it. But in the past, we never had good times, we didn't know enjoyment or pleasure or happiness. We just did whatever we were told, and I keep forgetting that. I keep thinking how much better it was when I had you and we were friends, but we weren't friends, that's just how I wanted to remember you. Now you see how troublesome having true emotions can be, it really screws you up."

E looked around the room, counting each of the holograms to make sure they were all present and accounted for.

"I guess I'm here to ask for your forgiveness, but 'forgive' is a word none of you understand." He then focused on his own hologram. "Even you don't understand. And this is why I have to put you all behind me. I can't go on just thinking about you, or trying to make you all out to be something you weren't. I have to move on."

E looked behind him to the main door. Waiting just on the other side was Katie, she was hardly the vibrant woman from before, but waited solemnly for E to finish.

"Inside this room, is what used to be, but outside that door is my new life. And it's time to conclude this with something you probably wouldn't understand either."

E moved towards the door, towards Katie, and took her in his arms. He took one final look back.

"Goodbye."

End

_Life is a battle between the living and death,  
in a war only death can win._

_At the end of the day's fighting, the living rest,  
now ensues a fight of darkness for those who remain,  
against the shadows, the echoes, the souls of those who failed._

_Their choice is to surrender or to fight on,  
that is their legacy,  
the last standing._

_K.E.W._


End file.
